Identify silver mark on fork

Exhausted my resources.

 

When I saw the first pic, I was thinking French, but those marks look like Asian characters.

Any chance you can get a close up pic of a single one? Might be the characters that mean "pure silver" or might be something else entirely.

 

Well, that certainly looks Asian.

Maybe @khl889 can tell us what it says, or at least which language.

 

There was a site that you could buy a download of Chinese export marks, but the download didn't work as of week ago and now the site is gone or a the very least not loading.

 

You mean Chinese-export-silver.com? Yeah it ain't workin'.

It has a picture of that hallmark on it, but until the site loads, I can't do anymore research into this.

 

Pretty sure that's an early Chinese export mark for Cantonese silversmith Bao Ying - the bright-cut engraved Old English pattern and three tines fits in well with late 18th-early 19th century dating. Nice items...

~Cheryl

 

Cheryl, thanks in my notes when I started research awhile ago Boa Ying Powing was my result, when I went to confirm my research the site i used was gone.

 

This is the Bao Ying mark:

http://chinese-export-silver.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Bao-Ying-Silver-Mark.png

While the second character 盛 is the same in both marks, the first character seems different: it's 宝 bao in Bao Ying but looks like 王 wang （or possibly 玉 yu) in the OP's mark. That is, 宝 bao has a "cap" on top. Of course sometimes some elements of these marks get worn and don't show clearly. Further, 王 wang in the OP's mark seems a bit small for a full character, suggesting there is another element there, like a "cap." But I can't be sure. Perhaps the OP should look closely at the mark on other pieces.

 

Back home now - not sure what's up with the Chinese-export-silver.com site at the moment, but here's an old screen-capture from there, showing two variants of the Bao Ying mark...



~Cheryl

 

Okayed looked closely at all 6 forks and the result is inconclusive. 1 mark is totally obscured, 4 have no cap at the top, and two appear to have some of cut off cap.
Thanks for the breakdown and links