2/28/2024 0 Comments Vintage number fontThe range starts at 10 centimeters and goes up by twos to 50 (and beyond, for the really big ones), so the most useful numbers for comparison are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 0. The most useful numbers for identification are those that denote the most common pan diameters. I’m assuming the coppersmith would buy a set of numbers and reuse them for as long as possible until they got lost or damaged. I’m assuming that they had available single numbers that could be individually struck into the copper, and possibly a set of commonly-used numbers - 26, 28, 30, etc. Second, I’m assuming that coppersmiths used the same number stamps over a period of time. By examining the font of a number closely on a piece of known origin, we can recognize for the same font on another piece and perhaps identify it.įor this little experiment, I am making two key assumptions.įirst, I’m assuming that coppersmiths put size stamps on pots, and not the customer. What I want to suggest to you is that these stamps carry information beyond the letter or number - that the very design of the character - its font - is a recognizable physical characteristic that we can use to track pieces from the same maker. Instead of the name of the house that made them, these pans might instead carry the mark of their diameter or the name or initials of their owner. Many of them are stamped with a maker’s mark, but many are not. But by then, it wasn’t too difficult to trace a pot to its maker after World War II, the number of French chaudronniers had dwindled to a handful of companies in Villedieu-les-Poêles, dominated by Mauviel, which began exporting en masse to the European and US market in the 1960s.īut prior to that, from perhaps 1820 to 1930s, there were thousands - tens of thousands - of copper pots produced by the most skilled copper artisans in the world. This held true for two centuries before slackening in the 1960s, when stamping dwindled to a generic “Made in France” and perhaps a store stamp or small maker’s logo. I think that old law is why most vintage French pots bear at least one stamp: the maker’s mark, a shop mark, a number, the initials of an owner. List of 67 chaudronniers in Villedieu-les-Poeles in 1863. In 1735, Louis XIV began issuing a series of laws to establish quality controls in the copper industry - the purity of copper and tin being a public health concern - culminating in a set of laws in 1745 that required a copper manufacturer to stamp a unique and traceable mark on its products. It is thanks to the government of France that stamps are a reasonably reliable means to identify vintage copper pots and pans. Copper has been stamped and etched and shaped for millennia, of course, but I’m speaking of the letters and numbers and logos on professionally produced French copper pots and pans. I’m a student of the stamps on vintage copper pots because they’re one of the best ways to trace age and provenance.
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