Can anyone identify these pewter touchmarks?

Hi everyone,

Is anyone with access to the appropriate information able to identify these pewter touch marks for me? They are on a fantastic pair of Georgian pewter Gallon jugs I am thinking of buying.

Thanks
Matt

 

Hi,
That one mark looks like the three turrets on the Danish castle. Just a guess.
greg

 

It does look like it could be a Danish pewter mark. I'm no where near my pewter reference books for am snowbirding in Florida. The only Danish mark similar to this I can find online at the moment is for th Dansk Metal-Kunst company by the designer Georg Thylstrup. His touchmark is a mermaid in a rectangle. Very very doubtful yours is by the same designer. I bet several Danish companies, designers, incorporated mermaids in their markings. It will be a good month or more before i can check my pewter reference books.
Scroll down to about the 18th touchmark:
http://www.macacke.com/Garage/Danish_Pewter.html

--- Susan

 

Thank you both, interesting for some reason I assumed they were English. Let me know if you find anything else.

I'm probably going to buy them, and I'll post some pictures if I do. But I've never seen anything quite like them

 

I brought them today, their capacity is actually 2 litres each, but they do look larger

 

Inside

 

They are wonderful. Engraved with initials probably means someones personal tankard. Maybe military?

 

I'm still not home to check through my pewter books; however, with the latest pics you have posted I can say that this cylinder tankard is probably of German origin because of the large ball thumbpiece. Germany, Austria and sometimes Hungary had these large round ball thumbpieces. Many other countries used smaller balls. As to the touchmarks, I haven't any help at this time. No doubt one is a maker's mark, another a city seal, another possibly a guild mark. The mark on the handle looks like 3 towers or 3 trees on the right. The mark may be on its side or upside down. There are at least 2 German cities that has 3 towers in their seal/seal. One is Hamburg and the other is Atona. I wish I could read the letters on the 1st mark on the left. All I can see is the letter "E." The mermaid mark with the date 1729 may be the guild mark with the date the guild was founded.

Now I'm saying this tankard is probably German, but with Denmark bordering German with some sections of Denmark now part of Germany and some sections of Germany now part of Denmark, I could still be Danish.

--- Susan

 

It just sunk in that this has a spout. This would be called a flagon rather than a tankard. A flagon is a type of bottle or vessel for wine and cider. They have handles, lids and spouts and are usually pewter. A tankard is a drinking vessel with a hinged lid and handle, aka steins.

Here are examples of flagons from a few countries:
http://www.antiques.com/classified_...ge=&img.x=0&img.y=0&img=submit&optstrict=YThe

--- Susan

 

Thank you everyone, someone else has suggested to me they are German too, so it seems likely that that's where they are from. Also thanks for correcting me on the terminology. It's a shame we can't identify the touchmarks, I understand continental marks generally aren't as well documented as British or American marks

 

There use to be a great pewter tankard, flagon, etc... website online. The owner of the site was an expert on pewter marks and these types of vessels. He died a few years ago. His site is now down. We still miss him nearly every day. He was a fine person and very generous with his knowledge. For a time I had a copy of his webpages on my desktop and external drive. Needless to say the desktop had trouble resulting in a need to reinstall windows. Everything on the desktop was wiped off. I wasted no time moving most everything from the external drive to the desktop, but for some reason the pewter websites didn't get copied. 3 months later the external drive crashed. Nothing on it could be retrieved. At the time it didn't bother me for thought I had t all on the desktop. Then about 6 months later a pewter question came up. I searched around the desktop for those pewter pages with no luck. All those pewter info pages were long gone. I was heart broken.

There are several pewter sites out there as well as stein websites that have forums you might post a query. None of those sites have all the info Pat had on his site. I have several pewter reference books at home, but most deal with American and Great Britain pewter. If you still have these flagons come the middle of April, I'll be back home and will search through my sources.

A few sites:
http://www.pewtersociety.org/
http://www.pewtercollectorsclub.org/
http://pewterbank.com/
https://www.beerstein.net/articles/s9309.htm
http://www.steveonsteins.com/pewter-rules-for-dummies
http://gaukartifact.com/2013/02/28/pewterers-marks/
http://www.macacke.com/Garage/Danish_Pewter.html

--- Susan