Tea with Margaret, Posted on March 3, 2026

Sometimes a small object can tell a big story.  The silver spoons pictured here are made of silver, but they are not sterling silver. Rather, they are made of coin silver.

Coin silver is 90 percent silver; sterling silver is 92.5 percent silver.

What is the difference?

Before 1859 when the Comstock Lode was discovered in Nevada, silver was hard to come by. If you wanted sterling silver, you would have to import it from another country, such as England. To save time and money (on tariffs), people who wanted objects made from silver would often save up a pile of silver coins. When they had enough of them, they would take the coins to a silversmith to have them fashioned into some other object or objects.

These two spoons were owned by Margaret Scott (1822-1892).  They were made by a silversmith named Thomas Nowlan who lived in Virginia.

How do we know this particular silversmith made these spoons? We know this because if you turn them over, Thomas Nowlan’s name is stamped on the back!

Not only were coin silver implements useful on a daily basis, having the stamps on the back was a form of security. If they were stolen, marked silver would be easier to identify and hopefully recover.