Swiss officialdom

Gold and silver?

Ludwig Oechslin has taken his intellectual and ingenious philosophy of technical reduction a romantic step further. The orange dots of his annual calendar display turn in a setting of gold and silver. The ochs und junior anno cinquanta is available in white gold, red gold and silver. And now it’s the turn of Swiss federal officialdom to come into the frame:

Basically speaking, the Federal Assay Office checks and governs the purity of precious metals relating to goods sold or manufactured in Switzerland. Bea (with her camera) and I (Beat Weinmann as representative of ochs und junior) went yesterday with our haul of Peter Cantieni-manufactured cases (13 silver, 12 red gold and 11 white gold) to the Assay Office in Basel to have them tested and officially hallmarked.

The cases’ fineness was confirmed as 750/1000 (gold) and 925/1000 (silver).The anno cinquanta receives two Swiss federal hallmarks:

The official Swiss hallmark (the head of a St. Bernard dog) and the stamp of the Vienna Convention for export into the EU. This latter hallmarking convention dates from 1972 and warrants the purity of the metal on its entry into the EU, after which no further testing is necessary. In short: the hallmarks are a key consumer protection measure which is laid down by law and which facilitates cross-border shipping.

We are responsible for applying the remaining two of the four stamps  –  the ochs und junior Responsibility Mark and the Standard of Fineness. This will be done by Paul Gerber in his workshop using the same magnetic rig built by Peter Cantieni (see earlier ochs blogs).

Careful testing and hallmarking…

Our treasure trove remained for the most part in our hands… Here we are focused on placing the cases in the jig…

… and packing them in protective foil.

I’ll be handing the assayed anno cinquanta cases back to Paul Gerber on Monday.

Meanwhile, like us, they’re merrily working away…