Thread: Any info on a straight marked S over L & Co within a square?

From what I can gather, they were silver-platers, makers of shaving mugs, brushes, and silver plated tableware. Most of the plated items, including shaving mugs, are stamped 'quadruple plated' on the bottom. Ordinary silver plate consisted of 2 troy ounces of silver in solution used to plate 144 forks, whereas quadruple plate used 8 troy ounces for the same amount of cutlery. Quadruple plate was the best you could get at the end of the 19th century. This shaving brush and quadruple plated mug is by S. L. & Co. and is dated 1880:



From the bottom of a shaving mug:



From the bottom of a creamer:



One firm which looked interesting was Schohay, Ludwig & Co. They started off as Schohay & Ludwig but by 1867 adopted the S L & Co appellation. However, they were based in Philadelphia and the only marks attributed to them that I could find are an arrow and the word 'COIN'. They seem to have been around up until 1877, but maybe they relocated later on and the successors filed another mark.

There are other S. L. & Co.s, notably the Aberdeen firm of silversmiths, but once again the mark is different.

Regards,
Neil