posted 06-13-2006 06:44 PM            

I’m not sure of the metal of a salt spoon/shovel of my mother’s. She enjoyed collecting odd ones and also had quite a collection of cut-glass master salt cellars as well as individual ones.

This spoon/shovel has a brass color, which probably means it is brass; however, as the makers were silversmiths I wanted to check it out here. The makers were Hall & Elton of Geneva, NY - c1840. It is in the shape of a shovel, 3¾” long, notched neck, fiddle shaped handle with a bent up tip. Inscription on handle is “P.B. Sutton”. I did have a bit of a problem identifying the markers because there were **2** Hall and Elton silversmith companies back then. The other one was Hall, Elton and Co., of Wallingford, CT. Finally found an illustration of the mark for the one in NY in Ensko.

Here are views of the shovel: one by camera, scans of the back and front, and a scan of the mark.

TIA.

--- Susan

posted 06-13-2006 07:28 PM            

I am confused. You say it is "brass in color" but the picture shows it as silver. Did you mean that there is another metal underneath the silver that is showing through?

posted 06-13-2006 09:32 PM            

>You say it is "brass in color" but the picture shows it as silver.<

The scans, epecially the mark, may look like silver, greyish. I had to reduce the saturation of color in the scan of the mark to make it legible. Believe me in real life it is a brass to gold in color like in the camera pic. To me the shovel in the camera pic on my 17" and 19" monitors looks gold to brass in color. Maybe on a smaller monitor the colors look more silver?

The shovel doesn't polish with either silver or brass polish. The surface is a bit rough - not smooth and shiny like silver pieces or my brass candlesticks.

Here is a close up pic of the handle which may show the color better.

--- Susan

posted 06-14-2006 11:47 AM            

Thank you all for your messages. The "Hall & Elton coin and nickel" thread was my answer. Like that thread mentioned, my first impression was also that it might be coin but ruled that out for not flexible enough and silver polish hardly worked on it.

Last night did some testing. The shovel definitely was not magnetic which ruled out iron and steel. On to the ice tests. I used copper, sterling, and nickel silver spoons; a slender brass rod; and a 14k gold pin all about the same size as this shovel. In turn held each along side of the shovel in ice water. The sterling spoon and gold pin conducted the cold in a matter of a few seconds. The copper was quick. The nickel silver and the shovel were very slow and the slender brass rod even slower by a few seconds.

At this point I definitely ruled out silver, gold and copper. The nickel silver was very much in the running. However, I still couldn't rule out brass because it is almost identical in color as a c1890 brass thimble I have.

I pulled out the polished again. This time I used a brass/copper cloth by Goddard's instead of Wright's liquid brass polish. It polished up like a chamnp removing the tarnish. The cloth was black with the tarnish. The silver polish still hardly touched it.

Now after reading that Hall & Elton thread:

>Almost without exception, it's all plain, never-plated, nickel silver (or German silver if you prefer, or alpacca, although technically that's a specific brand). It always has that yellowy NS color, but otherwise looks just like a coin spoon,...<

With the above I'm more satisfied with nickel silver metal which has a "yellowy ... color", or it could be the alpacca. However, brass is still on top of my list even though that thread never mentions the possibility of brass.

Thank you all again!

--- Susan