Mine's a copper electroform taken from a set of moulds that I acquired last year, but the actual moulds were in use by a helmet restorer from the 90's.
So it's possible there's a number of these taken from the same moulds over the years on various lance caps and independent plates on the market.
This is the first one I've produced from them so yours definately isn't my work
An electroform will be an exact match to the size of the mould and is accurate down to an extremely fine scale. They use the process for generating stamper plates for LP's and CD/DVD so they can actually repoduce at the micron level depending on the quality of the mould.
Or you can generate copper electrodes for spark erroding dies from them.
Your correct, it's plated, rather than fire gilt, though you can get extremely close with a 24K soft gold on thick and various chemical dips. It will almost replicate fire-gilding and burnishing.
This one was done with bright finish, simply to differentiate it and I avoided oxidising the silverwork for the same reason.
You have also to bear in mind, from about the 1880's, plating began to replace fire gilding and post 1900 supplanted it as the standard finish.
I'll get some measurements and some close up pics for you tommorrow as well as the 21st plate
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