Featured As good as silver plate will get for me

Yes sorry I missed it:

http://www.ascasonline.org/articolomarzo144.html

 

Thanks! I wonder, though, since the piece you found this on is not marked by Christofle in any way - in fact has a mark of unknown origin - whether it has any special meaning? The "cat" with the CC is quite different.

I guess I should re-state. The Christofle with the 35 is shown in the table as being "attributed" to pieces from either Karlsruhe or Vienna. But your item has no other identifiable Christofle markings.

 

If you scroll down a bit you will see the CAT with a 3 and 5 just like on the flatware. Perhaps this is similar to when Reed & Barton or other companies allow their name to go on something that wasn't directly manufactured by the company?

 

Not a clue. And I'm not really sure that the author of that article knows for sure either.

 

He seems immensely knowledgeable on the topic (most definitely more than me, or anyone else on the planet as it relates to Christofle it appears):

Note in the first link he's using a quadratic polynomial function to reverse engineer the real years of issuance of Christofle items using ordinal numbers appearing on them...whatever the heck that means...
http://www.ascasonline.org/articoloDICEM140.html
http://www.ascasonline.org/articoloGIUGN130.html
http://www.ascasonline.org/ARTICOLOMARZ180.html
http://www.ascasonline.org/windowOTTOB77.html

 

You're starting to lose me with the math mumbo jumbo. Do your pieces have ordinal numbers on them?

 

No, I was just responding about whether the author knows for sure. I agree he might not know for sure, but I see in his other posts that he communicates directly with Professor Marc de Ferrière le Vayer the former director of the Christofle Museum. I was just suggesting that he seems to be an expert on the topic and I trust the article. As always, I really love your input Bakersgma and here you helped me narrow down the search a bunch.

 

And you are welcome, of course.

I just think it's a big leap to assume that the appearance of an obscure mark occasionally showing up a pieces that came from Christofle's locations outside of France means the item, not marked in Christofle's usual manner, must be theirs.

 

I got some spare time today, so I started cleaning and polishing the CTF35 pattern. Admittedly, it took forever. I tried using toothpicks to clean out muck from the stamp marks and that was the most tedious part of it. I'm pretty happy with the results:

 

like a proud Plate cleaning Papa !!!!1
well done !

 

Just beautiful. Did you try a q-tip for those small parts?

 

Regarding that math model. I think what he was saying that the pieces were labelled sequentially and therefore, the numbers are ordinal numbers - 1st, 2nd and so forth. With the graph starting with 1862 as 0, he postulated that production being a steady rate, he could plot his pieces on the curve of the time period to determine their approximate age. He said that the curve wasn't entirely correct because it didn't take into consideration manufacturing rates. If you had a numbered piece, then you could also approximate age according to the graph.

 

I tried, but I actually got more of it off with a toothpick. The christofle marks all have a black edge of heavy tarnish that was hard to scrape off.

 

Final photos, took some time to polish the second set:

 

You want to come a live with me. I have silver to polish.

 

Is it warm where you live? because silver polishing is the most relaxing part of my day.

 

Southern California - thought it's been chilly this year but usually year round shorts weather.

 

They turned out most beautifully.

 

Hi MrNate,
I LOVE polishing silver always have. There is nothing as relaxing as polishing silver. I have polished silver for all my friends and quite a few relatives. I must have been a servant in one of my past lives. My favorite pieces are a set of sterling from the White House. It was given to a woman who worked there from age 12 to when she retired when 80. She was gifted with a service of eight sterling from the 1880s. Her family sold it several years later and I purchased it.
greg

 

lots of work to polish all of the silverware but it looks wonderful Mr Nate

lol KikoBlueEyes