Sidney Scotch bowl

[Stephanie D.]

Was at an auction this weekend & picked up a Sidney, 2 Scotch bowl. It's the first piece of nickel or chrome plated CI I've purchased. My questions are A) Is it chrome or nickel? It was really rusty & I cleaned it like it was chrome. The bottom, & some of the inside appears to be nickel. So I'm not sure now if it's polished nickel on the outside. I didn't think Sidney/ Wagner used chrome, which brings me to my second question...is it a fake? Also, any ideas how to bring back the luster to it? This will be the one piece I don't plan on using for cooking, but possibly a fruit bowl.

I think I attached the pics? I'm really new to this!

 

[Doug D.]

I believe Wagner did exclusively nickel for it plated pieces. You can see that your bowl's pattern started life as a WAGNER SIDNEY, O. piece, and had it's markings modified to become a SIDNEY pot. They forgot to fill in the comma, though.

 

[Stephanie D.]

I did some research on it & that's all I could find as well. How would I find out if it's polished nickel on the outside or if someone put a chrome plating on after it was mfg?
Thanks!

 

[Doug D.]

Unless a previous owner had someone able and willing to do a re-plate for little or nothing, I would doubt that was done to it. My guess, without seeing the inside, is that any differentiation in appearance between the bottom or inside and the outside is due to whether or not the metal in those areas was polished before the plating process. If a mirror-like finish is required, the iron surface must first be made smooth. As you can see, that was not done to the bottom.

 

[Steve Stephens]

The highly polished outside of the bowl is usual for this era Wagner pieces that were nickel plated. Chrome plating did not come into commercial use until 1926 and a few years afterwards on iron cookware. Wagner stayed with nickel but stopped the full polishing job. For under the rim of your pot it would be too time consuming and hard to get the polishing tools inside the rim so that area was left as-cast. Also, one would not see the underside of the pot in use.