Silver cup, France, 19th century

Silver cup from France.
The cup has the inscription: G * L * PIGHON. The cup has a worn decoration of tendrils all around.

The cup is marked with the so-called Bigorne and Minerva cup.

These silver cups were often presented as baptismal gifts to children in France, who would use them for many years. It was a requirement in boarding schools that the child bring a knife, fork, spoon and cup and these were therefore routinely engraved with the child's name to ensure their return when the child left school.

The "insect" mark is stamped exactly behind the Minerva mark. This was done to make creating and using counterfeit quality marks extremely difficult. Although it was possible for skilled engravers to make reasonably good false hallmarks, it was impossible to reconstruct a false bigorne anvil because each object a forger could examine contained only a very small fraction of the approximately 90 insects.

The cup has signs of wear (dents).

Weight: 54.8 grams. Height: 8 cm. Diameter: 7.5 cm.