Geneology of Silversmiths

If you are trying to find a particular silversmith, and who these days is not. You may want to check out this site.

It contains an index of American silversmiths.

It also contains a list of their initial marks.

There is another great list of initial marks that can be found here.  The site 925-1000.com is an awesome resource for silver collectors and contains list after list of information that is well organized and easy to search.

Like any good researcher, you should not rely completely on one one source for information. Researchers, antique guides and writers and the like do sometimes get things wrong.  Especially when dealing with something as complex as the history of an industry. It is important to triangulate information.  For example, this means that if we look up the information in one place we need to check that information against other sources. This is really important in doing internet research. This article on health information covers some of this process and the types of information available.  If I can think of some examples specifically related to silver I will post them later and perhaps flesh this out a bit in a new and longer post.