An end to the silver standard

European laws are rendering the assay offices obsolete

After nearly 700 years, the UK's oldest form of consumer protection - the compulsory hallmarking of silver by British assay offices - is coming to an end. This will be the last Christmas when shoppers can buy contemporary silver giftware - tankards, candlesticks, jewellery - bearing only British hallmarks.

Next spring, following a European Court of Justice ruling, changes to UK hallmarking law will permit European exporters to sell silver bearing neither the official British import hallmark, nor the hallmark of the International Hallmarking Convention, the only other hallmark recognised by the UK.

It will be lawful to sell imported articles described as silver without first submitting them for content testing and hallmarking at one of the UK's four independent assay offices - or having them stamped, prior to export, with the hallmark of the Convention, a group of 10 European countries (including Britain) that enforces rigorous standards of independent assay.

What will become compulsory throughout the EC is recognition of the hallmarks of most European countries, even those not in the Convention.

These include Spain, France and the Netherlands - countries which, despite their compulsory and independent hallmarking systems, are not members of the Convention because their assaying procedures are not considered to be stringent enough.

As a result, British shoppers will need to accustom themselves to a confusing array of European hallmarks, such as the French eagle. They will no longer be sure to find on contemporary silver currently familiar hallmarks, such as the Convention's weighing scales, symbol of justice, or the British inverted-omega with its accompanying regional hallmark: a horseshoe (for London and Sheffield), a triangle (for Birmingham) or a cross of St Andrew (Edinburgh), plus the 925 in an oval, indicating that it is 92.5 per cent sterling silver.

As for the traditional dog-eared A4-size hallmark guide pinned to the wall at the jeweller's, it will no longer be of use to consumers wanting to know whether the French tolerate variations either side of their eccentric 800 standard, or whether the Dutch permit hallmarking of mixed metals - none of which is at present legal in this country. To find out would require a collection of scarce and expensive reference books - or a trip to Brussels.

The brushing aside of British hallmarking law by Brussels has enraged members of Britain's silver establishment. Lord Broadbridge, a Liveryman of the Goldsmiths Company and an amateur silversmith for 20 years, says: "In an age when consumer protection is to the fore, the Europeans seem to be moving against it. The public will have no idea what they're buying.

"No other country in the world but ours has such a complete and ideal system of hallmarking. I don't want to depart from it one jot."

According to Sir Jerry Wiggin, MP and promoter of the existing Hallmarking Act (1973), the EC's threat to British hallmarking will be strongly resisted. He says: "I've spoken to everybody from the Prime Minister down and they are solidly against these changes."

The name that defenders of British hallmarking whisper is Houtwipper. It sounds like the name of a cad in a PG Wodehouse novel. In fact, it is Mrs Ludomira Neeltje Barbara Houtwipper, charged under Dutch hallmarking law - similar to ours - with attempting to sell imported silver and gold rings without the required Dutch import marks.

The European Court of Justice found against her, on the grounds that her goods were not hallmarked at all. However, it ruled that goods with hallmarks stamped in a member state by an independent body "equivalent" to that required by Dutch law, which are "intelligible" to consumers, could be legally offered for sale in the Netherlands without additional Dutch hallmarking. The judgment was seen as a windfall by Dutch, French and Spanish silver exporters.

That was in September 1994. There is now a rush, described by the Department of Trade and Industry as "relatively urgent", to bring British law into line with Houtwipper. Failure to do so will result in "infraction proceedings", starting with an official request by the EC Commission for an explanation.

Apart from Houtwipper, there is a more explosive shot against British hallmarking lying in the EC locker: a draft directive that would make legal not only hallmarks by approved independent bodies such as the British assay offices, but also by silver manufacturers themselves. Independent hallmarking and manufacturer's marks, according to the draft, are "equivalent". Others consider that marking by manufacturers is an invitation to fraud.

It is the threat of being forced by the EC to accept manufacturers' marking - as practised by Europe's two biggest silver manufacturers, Italy and Germany - that has caused most fear and outrage among British silversmiths.

Lord Broadbridge says: "German and Italian manufacturers' marks are a disgrace. They are judge and jury in the same court." David Evans, Assay Master of Goldsmiths Hall, adds: "If, as the European Commission deems, manufacturers' marks and independent hallmarks are `equivalent', and you can't tell the difference between them, what's the point of independent hallmarking? Consumers might as well hallmark silver themselves."

`Our fine silver needs no hallmark'

Silversmiths in the "non-hallmarking" countries, Italy and Germany, fume about Britain's compulsory hallmarking of imports. A "trade restriction", they say.

But what of contemporary silversmiths in this country? Some of those at the cutting edge of silver design do not give a jot for hallmarking. What is the relevance to silver design, they ask scornfully, of a system devised by Edward I in 1300 to make sure that silver plate turned into coin was of the same sterling standard?

Alistair McCallum, a 51-year-old Australian silversmith working in this country, says: "The only good reason for hallmarking a piece of silver is if it has no artistic value, only bullion value".

His bowls, by the Japanese mokume gane or "wood-grain" process, so-called because of its flecks of silver mixed with copper, cost about pounds 2,000 each. The mixture of metals disqualifies them from hallmarking as silver. Even the silver rim of one of them was rejected by the London assay office on the grounds that it was attached to mixed metal. So he no longer bothers with hallmarking. That means he cannot legally call his work silver. But so what? "People who buy my work are aware of its value - and that is not determined just by weighing it".

He defends maker-marking, legal in Australia. "Frauds have the book thrown at them by the Trade Practices Commission".

McCallum's bowls are not the only contemporary silverware that seem to be retreating ever farther beyond the pale of the assay office. Who would have guessed that the red wire trumpet by another Australian, 48-year- old Robert Baines, was silver at all? In fact it is silver wire lacquered red. To hallmark it would be to knock a hole in it.

Has British hallmarking law cramped creativity in design? After all, Britain has no dedicated retailer of contemporary silverware and the few contemporary commissioned pieces that crop up at auction get knocked down for as little as a tenth of their price when new.

You can form your own opinion by visiting the V&A's new silver galleries, opened last month, where you can compare displays of silverware commissioned by Goldsmiths Hall - every one hallmarked - with those commissioned by the V&A, which include Baines's unhallmarked trumpet, McCallum's unhallmarked bowls and some delightfully straggly unhallmarked necklaces of oxidised silver that look like barbed wire, by the 40-year-old Briton Cynthia Cousens.

"The point of this gallery," says its curator, Philippa Glanville, "is to see how conservative, or otherwise, the Brits are. We don't take sides on hallmarking."

The trumpet? "It's conceptual art, isn't it, very much a feature of the Eighties and Nineties." A legitimate use for the silver? "It couldn't have been made out of anything else. Silver is malleable, ductile and has this great softness, fussiness. Can't you just imagine Robert Baines sitting at his fireside, knitting it?"

By contrast, the most striking piece in the Goldsmiths Hall cabinet is 42-year-old Jane Short's vase with enamelled jay's wing decoration. It was hallmarked on the bottom before enamelling.