Dating a Sterling Silver Peterson with No Hallmarks

[jgriff]

I was looking at old 309 Premier System Pipe I have and I noticed that the hallmarks are only "K&P" rather than the hallmark dating codes. However, it's clearly marked as "Sterling Silver" and it's marked "Made in Ireland" so I'm comfortable it's pre-republic.
Is there any way to narrow in a date without the familiar hallmarks?

 

[jgriff]

A little more digging and I found the Premier line wasn't introduced until the 1940s. So that does narrow it down alot... 1940-1949.

 

[badgercat]

Thats an interesting pipe. I didnt know they were allowed to mark it sterling silver without the appropriate hallmarks.

 

[badgercat]

From Peterson Pipe Project...doesnt explain the missing marks but is interesting. The missing marks may make your pipe quite unique.
Silver Band Dating

Silver hallmarks are placed on the silver after an assay office, in Peterson's case, the Dublin Assay Office, has verified that the silver content is indeed sterling, in other words 925 parts of silver per 1000 parts of the metal. The silver hallmarks on Peterson pipes are a group of three marks, each in an escutcheon; the first is a seated Hibernia denoting Dublin Ireland, the second is a harp denoting the silver fineness, and the third is a letter denoting the year. The style of letter and the shape of the escutcheon the letter is in, will determine the year in which the assay office stamped the metal band and not necessarily the year the pipe was made. Peterson orders these bands by the thousands and sends them to the assay office for hallmarking. The assay office will stamp the date of the year in which they received the bands and it may be a year or two or three before Peterson's employees happen to place one of these bands on a pipe though generally the bands are placed on a pipe in the year they were stamped.

 

[jgriff]

I was hunting around on Jim Lilley's website (which is without a doubt more useful for Peterson information that their own website).
Quoting from his page:

There are many Peterson pipes with sterling silver bands that do not have hallmarks though, even some in the Premier and Deluxe grades.
I have many, many Petersons stamped "sterling silver" on the band that lack hallmarks. There is no question about it. I don't know if it is silver-plated and still stamped sterling silver or what. I have a pipe that is a System Premier stamped "sterling silver" but without hallmarks. I am looking at it with a 15X loupe, and it never had any hallmarks. I have found if they have the "K" & "P" in shields on the band, they often lack hallmarks.

it was my understanding that the sheets and tubes of silver were purchased by Peterson, stamped with the maker's mark, and then sent to the assay office. The assay office then would return the hallmarked tubes and sheets for the Peterson silversmiths to use.

It appears it's not unusual but still weird since there appears to be no reason for it.

 

[ssjones]

Peterson silver pipes made for sale in the United States had no requirement to be hallmarked, so they weren't. I learned this from Peterson expert, Mark Irwin (he is writing the upcoming book on Peterson pipes). Mark told me most were sold thru Irwin Ries in Chicago.

 

[rebornbriar]

Peterson silver pipes made for sale in the United States had no requirement to be hallmarked, so they weren't. I learned this from Peterson expert, Mark Irwin (he is writing the upcoming book on Peterson pipes). Mark told me most were sold thru Irwin Ries in Chicago.

Correct Al, hallmarking is only necessary if the pipes are sold in one of the "hallmarking convention" countries. The USA has no hallmarking convention of their own, so pipes sent for export did not need to be assay tested. This also saved a little bit of money on production as each and every silver band that was assay marked had to pay for the test.

 

[jgriff]

Hmmm....interesting. This is my favorite part of old pipes. I bought the pipe from a Irish seller so it might have been exported and returned back to Ireland before coming to the U.S. There is seventy odd years of history .....

 

[ssjones]

I'm dating a similarly stamped/banded pipe.

http://pipedia.org/wiki/Peterson

From that link the block style "Made in Ireland" was used between '47 add '49.