MADAM – Having read your story about the reappearance on the market of boatswain whistles that had been pulled from sale in 2008 by the Antique Plate Committee (ATG No 2282), I would like to draw the attention of your readers to the work of this committee and the Hallmarking Act 1973.
The committee was set up by the London Goldsmiths’ Company in 1939; its role is to advise the company as to whether articles of second-hand and antique hallmarked silver and gold comply with the Hallmarking Act.
The desire was to clean up a market cluttered with what was then termed ‘spurious plate’: that is to say articles which bore fake or inserted hallmarks, or whose purpose had been altered since hallmarking.