Is silver plate included in this category?

Yes. Electroplate sits in the same category as solid silver, and forty-two titles say plated with another fourteen saying plate. Plated fish sets, lobster picks and full canteens all appear. Old Sheffield plate shows up only two or three times in the whole sample, and mainly as knife trays rather than cutlery.

How old are the oldest pieces?

The period field runs from 1700 to 1960, but titles reach further at both ends. A London spoon dated 1577 is the earliest piece in the sample. At the other end, a set of grape shears dated 1968 is among the latest. Titles often carry a hallmark year, so they date a piece more closely than the period label does.

Which patterns come up most often?

Fiddle leads the named patterns in these listings, with eleven titles, and Kings follows. Queens, Hanoverian, Old English and Coburg turn up too, along with Athenaeum and Wellington. Pattern names cluster around canteens and larger sets, where the whole service shares one handle design.

What counts as a specialist serving piece?

Fish servers, berry spoons, basting spoons, marrow scoops, grape scissors, sugar tongs, asparagus tongs, stilton scoops and lobster picks. Serving appears in thirty-five titles, servers in fifteen. They come singly and in pairs as often as in sets, and dessert, fruit, butter and sugar all recur as descriptors.

Are these listings all British silver?

No. Non-British silver is a steady thread. French appears in twelve titles, Scottish in fourteen and Irish in eleven. Beyond that, single Chinese export, Belgian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch, Swiss, Russian, American and Australasian pieces all surface, including a German canteen for twelve weighing 3,138g.

Do makers' names define this category?

Not on this evidence. Around forty-four listings a year come from more than a hundred dealers, and no firm's name recurs often enough to stand for the category. Where names do appear, they appear as one-offs, stamped, on a case label, or given as an attribution.