Silver-Plated Coaster with Shell and Scroll Rim on Four Ball Feet, Marked EP on Steel, Heavy Oxidation to the Well, c. 1950–1975

The Piece

A small round coaster, a shallow dish with a deep well and a wide decorative border, standing clear of the table on four little ball feet.

The rim is the whole design: a repeating pattern of fluted shells alternating with C-scrolls, each scroll finishing in a small bead, struck in crisp relief and running unbroken all the way round. It still carries its silver, gone soft and grey with tarnish.

The well is something else entirely. The floor of the dish has oxidised to a deep orange rust, mottled through with brown and black, pooling darker at the centre and breaking into a fine granular crust across the base.

Underneath, four gold-toned ball feet sit at the quarters, worn bright on their undersides. Between them the base is stamped with a small maker's device and, beneath it, SILVER PLATED over EP ON S[TEEL].

History & Provenance

The mark on the base explains the condition exactly, which is unusual and rather satisfying.

Silver plate is always silver over something else, and the something else is stamped on the bottom so you know what you bought. EPNS is electroplated nickel silver — a copper, nickel and zinc base. EPBM is electroplated Britannia metal, a tin-based pewter used for teapots and jugs. Both were the respectable options.

“EP on steel” is the budget end. Steel is the cheapest base a plater can use, and it is the only one of them that rusts red. So the mark predicted this. Where the plating stayed intact — the high relief of the rim, the feet, the protected underside — the piece is still silver. Where it wore through, in the flat bottom of the well that took wet glasses over and over, the steel underneath met water and did what steel does.

The technology itself is Victorian. Elkington & Co. patented commercial electroplating in 1840, and it replaced the older fused Sheffield Plate almost immediately because it was faster, cheaper, and could coat any shape at all. That last part is what a rim like this depends on: every shell and scroll takes the silver evenly, which fused plate could never manage.

This is offered as a decorative object, not as silver. The rim pattern is the reason to have it — the well is past restoration and is not represented otherwise.

Dated on the steel base, which is a twentieth-century economy rather than a nineteenth-century one, and on the stamped rather than cast rim: c. 1950–1975. The maker's device on the base is small and worn and is not resolved to a firm; the coaster is offered unattributed.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Rust is a colour, and this is a very good one.

Deep orange shading to brown and black, ringed by a grey silver border of shells and scrolls, is a combination no manufacturer would design and no two of which are alike. Set it on a dark wood shelf, a green painted surface or a stone mantel and it reads as a small abstract painting with an ornate frame around it.

It is genuinely useful for dry things. A ring dish beside a sink, a spot for cufflinks or collar stays on a dresser, a place for a watch at the end of the day, incense cones, paperclips and stamps on a desk, a single tea light. The four feet lift it clear so it never sits flat against a finish.

It also earns a place in a photograph or a styled shelf, which is a real use. The border catches light, the well absorbs it, and it gives a flat surface somewhere to rest the eye.

A note on care, and this one runs against instinct. Do not try to remove the rust. There is no plating left underneath it — that is why it rusted — so a rust remover, a wire brush or an abrasive pad will take you down to raw pitted steel and leave you with a worse object than the one you started with. The corrosion is the surface now.

Do not put food or drink on it and do not put a wet glass on it, which is what caused this in the first place and will keep it going.

Keep it dry. Dust it with a soft dry brush, and if the silver rim needs attention, use a silver cloth on the border alone, keeping polish out of the well. Never wash it, never soak it and never put it in a dishwasher. Store it somewhere dry rather than a bathroom or a basement, and put a felt pad under it on a polished surface.