Is it Pewter?

I discovered something interesting when I started my Etsy shop. Of course, once I posted my items, I did a search to see if they came up. Searching for ‘pewter bowl’ did bring up my pewter bowl. It also brought up paintings of pewter bowls and ‘antique’ pewter bowls (if you don’t keep polishing it, pewter can turn a darker gray quite quickly, so sometimes ‘antiques’ aren’t actually very old) and, to my surprise, a lot of items that aren’t pewter at all.

Many people like pewter because it is pretty and shiny, similar to silver and yet much cheaper than silver. Silver is a precious metal. Pewter is an alloy (which is a mixture of elements – in this case 92% tin, 6% copper and 2% antimony).

While it is cheaper that silver, that doesn’t make it cheap. Especially when it is handmade holloware such as my father and I do, where each piece is created by hand (as opposed to cast items, which are faster to turn out).

There’s another metal alloy called armetale. It can only be cast and it is harder than pewter. It is produced by Wilton Armetale. Like pewter, it turns darker gray with time. The thing about armetale is that it is both much cheaper than pewter and often confused with pewter. I have to confess this drives me a little bit nuts, mostly because my stuff is competing with it and I look really expensive in comparison.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with armetale as an alloy. If you want items that are tough and inexpensive, it’s great. The problem comes when people buy it thinking that they are getting a great price on pewter. This isn’t something that only bugs me, as I found a post on ebay entilted RWP Wilton Armetale is Not Pewter. A search for ‘Wilton pewter’ on ebay returns hundreds of items.

If you find ‘pewter’ labelled ‘Wilton’, what you have really found is armetale. Another way to tell is to look for a touchmark. Pewter virtually always has a touchmark on the bottom identifying who has created the piece. Armetale does not.

My father’s touchmark

I want to make it clear that I am not degrading armetale. I just want people to realize what they are getting. If you want armetale, go for it. But if you want pewter, make sure that great deal you found is the real thing.