These sinks were never made in Germany and did not originate from the 1800's, in
fact Germany has nothing to do with German Silver sinks at all, just the
metal.
German silver was first known and used in China. It became known in the
west from imported wares called
bai-tong or
pakfong (
白銅, literally "white copper"),
for which the silvery metal colour was used to imitate sterling silver.
According to Berthold Laufer, it was identical with
khar sini, one of
the seven metals recognized by Jābir ibn Hayyān.
In the 18th century, researchers found it was a copper-nickel-zinc alloy .
In 1770 the Suhl (Germany) metalworks were able to produce a similar alloy.
In 1823 a German competition was held to perfect the production process: the
goal was to develop an alloy that possessed the closest visual similarity to
silver. The brothers Henniger in Berlin and Ernst August Geitner in
Schneeberg independently achieved this goal. The manufacturer Berndorf named
the trademark brand Alpacca, which became widely known in northern
Europe for nickel silver. About the same time in 1832, a form of German
silver was also developed in Birmingham, England.
After 1840, the development of electroplating caused nickel silver to
become widely used. It formed an ideal, strong and bright substrate for the
plating process. It was also used unplated in applications such as cheaper
grades of cutlery. Elkay produced the first German Silver sinks in
1906, not in Germany in the 1800's.
