[QUOTE=fernando]I am afraid the "touch" is the fineness of noble metals, not the mark of makers ...
" Contrary to what the ordinary citizen often supposes, jewelery pieces are not made of precious metals in their pure state.
In fact, precious metals in that state are very little workable.
If an ordinary wedding ring, for example, were made of fine gold, its resistance to deformation would be so low that the usual day-to-day activities of an ordinary user would be sufficient to constantly damage it.
Therefore, goldsmiths have always had the need to add other metals to the precious metals they worked with, in order to obtain an alloy suitable for the type of work they aimed to produce.
The amount of precious metal in the alloy is translated through the indication of its touch, meaning that the higher the touch of a piece, the greater the content of precious metal per unit of mass of that piece.
Quoting J. Almeida Costa and A. Sampaio e Melo (in Portuguese Dictionary), it can be said, therefore, that touch is the percentage of pure metal in an alloy in which it is fundamental.
The term "title" is also often used in place of touch.
Usually a good sterling silver has a 925/ooo touch... or fineness. The mix is ussually copper. Same criteria goes for gold,[/QU
EXCELLENT EXPLANATION Fernando!!! Thank you. I clearly had not understood the intent and meaning of the 'touch' in presuming its use as a makers indicator. The dialogue I had read in several references noting the use of the 'mark' of these workers in precious metal ALSO placing IT on non precious metal hilts.
You can see how I would arrive at that perception.
Cast metal hilts , brass, I have not seen others with these initialed cartouches in them. My point was that my example seems to be an anomaly just as its very existence as a type of 'briquet' not in wide use in a time when regulation or standardization was not the case.
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