One of the mistakes often occurring on ebay.de auction is the incorrect attribution of silver plated objects with the one-word mark "Wellner" to the Aue factory August Wellner & Sons. In reality, these items were made in Amsterdam by the branch company Wellner Zilver Fabrieken N.V. (in English Wellner Silver Factories joint-stock company). According to my previous paper in Member's Window, from 1926-1927 the mark of the Aue factory August Wellner & Soehne was changed to "Original Wellner", in order to distinguish the items made by Wellner branches in Amsterdam and Milano from those made in Aue.

The Amsterdam company Wellner Zilver Fabrieken was founded by Leo Frans Jacques Eyck, the talented Dutch entrepreneur. He was born in 1896 to the family of a gold trader in Roermond [1]. In 1923, together with his younger brother, he set up in Roermond the wholesale company of jewellery, gold, silver work, watches, etc. In 1927 the brothers received an offer from August Wellner & Sons to organize a sales representation of the Aue company, which they accepted. The sales office was later transformed to Wellner Silver Factories. In 1930, Leo moved to Belgium and founded a sales representation there, so-called Orfèvrerie Wellner S.A. (Silversmith Wellner joint-stock company). In 1934, Leo Eyck returned to Amsterdam and became a Director of Wellner Silver Factories. To the best of my knowledge, Orfèvrerie Wellner operated only as a sales representative of the Wellner Silver Factories. Thus they sold the silver-plated objects with the mark used by the Amsterdam branch.

Now, I will mention briefly the heraldry of this branch. Unlike August Wellner & Sons in Aue, Wellner Zilver Fabrieken (and Orfèvrerie Wellner) used only one characteristic element, namely, the image of three elves bearing a knife, fork and spoon. Some fragments of silver-plated ash-trays from my collection, produced by this Wellner branch and used for advertisement purposes, are given below.

The hollow ware silver-plated products issued by the Wellner Zilver Fabrieken company possess the same excellent quality as the products of the Aue factory. They all correspond to Art Deco style. Below, I present some photos of the most remarkable items from my collection, made about 80 years ago.

According to our recent findings, Dutch Wellner Zilver Fabrieken company haven't issued his own marks for silver-plated products. Instead, it used the marks Nos.17-22 of main Wellner factory in Aue, Germany, see http://www.ascasonline.org/windowMARZ94.html

I am grateful to Ms. Irene Horne for her careful reading of my manuscript. My email address is niko@phys.ucc.ie. Any comments, questions or letters with additional information are very welcome. However, please do not send any requests for valuation and/or expertise, such letters will be ignored.