I get emails on a regular basis from people who are curious about objects they come across. Here’s one from a woman who wondered what the object in the picture was. Can you guess what it is?

Dear Johanne: This silver dish is very worn and I don’t think there is much silver left on it so it wouldn’t be worth much.  But I am curious as to what it would have been used for. Without doing a lot of research, do you know? B.

Dear B.

This is a late Victorian covered butter dish and you are right – it has seen better days. An ornate butter knife would have been placed into the slots on the side of the bottom saucer/dish. If you look at the second picture you will note a glass dish and a metal rim. The owner would have placed ice in the bottom of the dish then placed the glass liner over the ice. The rim would have kept this liner in place. The butter would be placed on the glass dish and covered with the fancy lid. Victorians loved decoration and if there was a place where ornate designs could be added, it was. The style and simplicity of the designs on this piece identifies this piece as being made C1900.

The dish you have was made by the Standard Silver Company, a maker of silver plated items who was based in Toronto, Ontario. The mark says it is Quadruple Plated so this tells me that the item was of good quality. It looks like the base metal was made of Britannia Metal due to the greyish cast of the lid. Such items were highly prized in middle class homes and as such were kept polished and bright. Unfortunately such practices also wore off the silver so that what you see today is the result. Thus, there isn’t much value because of its condition.

PS: The other item is a sugar tong.