# Why our logo is an eagle’s head<\/p>\n
*Updated on 26 September 2026*<\/p>\n
*Take a French 18-carat gold wedding band and turn it over: under the loupe, a one-millimetre eagle’s head stands guard, as it has watched over family gold since 1838. It is the question we are asked most often, and the answer owes nothing to marketing: it owes everything to the history of the metal.*<\/p>\n
Gold & Silver Company (GSC), an integrated foundry and refinery<\/a> in Dottignies (Mouscron), assays, melts, refines and strikes metal under one roof, under the approval of the Royal Mint of Belgium and the supervision of an approved assayer. When the house chose its emblem, it did not look for an animal that would look serious on a business card. It took up the symbol the gold trade has stamped on its works for nearly two centuries, the one that jewellers, refiners and assay offices recognise at first glance. The eagle’s head is to precious metal what the scales are to justice: not a decoration, a language. This article tells where that language comes from, and why our bars speak it.<\/p>\n In our field experience at Gold & Silver Company, no question comes up more often than the one about the logo. People credit us with American inspiration, a heraldic nod, a family crest. The truth is simpler and finer. In our assay room, when a client presents a piece of jewellery whose composition they do not know, the expert’s first move is not to weigh it: it is to pass the ring under the loupe, in search of a tiny bird of prey. At the counter, the set expression says it all: \u00ab\u00a0stamped with the eagle’s head\u00a0\u00bb means, in jeweller’s French, \u00ab\u00a0it is gold\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n The answer therefore fits in one sentence: the eagle’s head has been, since 1838, the very symbol of controlled and guaranteed gold, and the house chose it to inscribe each of its bars in that tradition.<\/strong> A dealer can make do with a name; a refinery that strikes metal sets a mark into the substance itself, and that mark had to say the trade. Ours has said it since day one<\/a>.<\/p>\n France has controlled the fineness of its precious works since the thirteenth century: one of the oldest polices of matter in the world, whose history the customs directorate traces from medieval regulations to today’s guarantee offices. In 1838, the system took the face it still wears: the eagle’s head became the hallmark of gold works. Nearly two centuries later, it still certifies 750-thousandths gold, the 18-carat gold of wedding bands, signet rings and curb bracelets. Millions of jewels bear it, struck with a precise blow, often inside the ring, where only the knowing eye goes to find it.<\/p>\n The symbol eventually overflowed the law and entered the language. Among private individuals and professionals alike, \u00ab\u00a0eagle’s head\u00a0\u00bb stands as a certificate: the hallmark is sought under the loupe, pointed out with a finger, passed on with the jewel. Few emblems can claim such a career: a one-millimetre sign, struck into the most coveted metal, become synonymous with trust across an entire country. In Belgium, where the control of precious metals is organised around the Royal Mint of Belgium, hallmark culture is the same: it is, in fact, from the Mint that the house holds its approval.<\/p>\n Monetary history loves the eagle. In 1792, in their very first coinage act, the United States created their reference gold coin and officially named it the *eagle*: ten gold dollars, declined into the *half eagle* and the *quarter eagle*, then completed in 1849, in the thick of the California gold rush, by the twenty-dollar *double eagle*. The eagle is not a decoration on these coins: it is their legal name, to the point that no other creature has given its own to a modern gold coin. Since 1986, the American Gold Eagle has carried the line on for investors around the world.<\/p>\n The Old Continent keeps pace: the imperial eagle spreads its wings on the reverse of the German 20 marks, the double-headed eagle on the Austrian ducats, and the eagle with the serpent, perched on its cactus, signs the Mexican 50 pesos, one of the largest investment gold coins ever struck. The reason is plain: the eagle is the bird of sovereigns, and gold is the currency of sovereignties. When a house strikes metal under the supervision of an assayer approved by the Royal Mint of Belgium, it inscribes itself, modestly but precisely, in that genealogy.<\/p>\n One more intimate reason remained, which the ancients had already formulated. Pliny the Elder recounts, in Book X of his Natural History, the ordeal the eagle was said to impose on its eaglets: to stare at the sun without looking away, on pain of being cast from the nest. Medieval bestiaries made it the emblem of infallible sight. Modern science, for once, has not denied the legend: the visual acuity of the great eagles is four to five times our own, and a golden eagle spots its prey from several kilometres away.<\/p>\n Transpose that to the laboratory: it is exactly the specification of a refinery. At GSC, nothing enters or leaves without being looked in the face: spectrometer, densimeter, metrology balances whose screen faces the client, and the supervision of an assayer approved by the Royal Mint of Belgium over the house’s production. The entire trade consists in not blinking before the material, in taking nothing on trust, in verifying everything to the nearest fineness. The eagle signs only what it has seen.<\/strong> That is the emblem a house needed whose added value is precisely the eye.<\/p>\n !Gold & Silver Company struck gold bar with eagle’s head in relief, FINE GOLD mention and Au 999.9 fineness<\/a><\/p>\n *On the house’s struck bars, the emblem becomes a hallmark: the eagle’s head in relief at the top of the blank.*<\/p>\n A logo lives on paper and screens; a hallmark lives in the substance. The difference is not slight: the first is replaced with the fashions, the second binds forever, since it is struck into an unalterable metal. On the house’s struck bars, the eagle’s head stands out in relief at the top of the blank; those who want to see the gesture in detail, down to the tamper-proof seal and the assay certificate, will find the full demonstration on the page of the 5-gram gold bar<\/a>, the smallest struck piece in the range.<\/p>\n A point of honesty, because we are sometimes asked: GSC’s eagle’s head is not the French legal hallmark, which remains the monopoly of the guarantee offices; it is the house’s striking mark, its engraved identity. The bar’s guarantee rests on three things: the Au 999.9 fineness engraved in the metal, the unique serial number of each piece, and the supervision of the assayer approved by the Royal Mint of Belgium. The eagle’s head says who struck the bar; the fineness says what it contains; the approved assayer attests that it is true.<\/strong> The eagle of 1838 watches over wedding bands; ours watches over bars. Between the two, the same promise kept by the same figure: in gold, you do not sign what you have not verified.<\/p>\n The eagle and gold: the dates that matter<\/strong><\/p>\n | Date | Event |<\/p>\n | — | — |<\/p>\n | 1792 | The United States names its ten-dollar gold coin the *eagle*: the first and only modern gold coin named after the bird. |<\/p>\n | 1838 | The eagle’s head becomes France’s gold guarantee hallmark; today it certifies 750-thousandths gold. |<\/p>\n | 1849 | The California gold rush gives birth to the twenty-dollar *double eagle*. |<\/p>\n | 1986 | The American Gold Eagle joins the world’s great investment coins. |<\/p>\n | Today | Gold & Silver Company’s eagle’s head is struck in relief on the bars leaving Dottignies (Mouscron). |<\/p>\n In France, the eagle’s head certifies 750-thousandths gold, in other words 18 carats, and it has done so without interruption since 1838. A jewel that bears it has passed the legal guarantee control: the hallmark is struck by the state guarantee offices, often inside the ring, and it is read under the loupe. For a buyer, it is the fastest possible verification, the one our experts perform first at the agency counter, before any weighing or testing. To learn how to read the other hallmarks and what each fineness means, our gold guide<\/a> details the full system, from the eagle’s head to the maker’s mark.<\/p>\n No. The eagle’s head on our bars is the struck emblem of the house, its engraved identity, not the French state hallmark, which remains the monopoly of the official guarantee offices. The guarantee of a GSC bar rests on three verifiable elements: the Au 999.9 fineness engraved in the metal itself, the unique serial number assigned to each piece, and the supervision of an assayer approved by the Royal Mint of Belgium, who controls the house’s production. The eagle’s head says who struck the bar, the fineness says what it contains, and the approved assayer attests that the claim is true. You are welcome to verify all of this at the agency, by appointment<\/a>, with the bar in hand and the certificate in front of you.<\/p>\n Because the eagle is the emblem of the sovereignties that struck coinage. The United States went furthest: *eagle* is the legal name of their ten-dollar gold coin, created by the Coinage Act of 1792 and later joined by the *half eagle*, the *quarter eagle* and, in 1849, the twenty-dollar *double eagle*. Europe followed the same grammar: the imperial eagle on the German 20 marks, the double-headed eagle on the Austrian ducats, and the eagle with the serpent on the Mexican 50 pesos, one of the largest investment gold coins ever struck. Since 1986, the American Gold Eagle has extended that lineage for investors around the world. Wherever gold speaks the language of sovereignty, the eagle is never far away.<\/p>\n Sarah, Director, Gold & Silver Company<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why our logo is an eagle’s head: what the eagle symbolises for a gold refinery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The most frequently asked question in our assay room<\/h2>\n
1838: the year the eagle entered gold<\/h2>\n
The eagle, the only creature to have given its name to a gold coin<\/h2>\n
The eye that never blinks<\/h2>\n
From emblem to hallmark: when the logo enters the metal<\/h2>\n
Frequently asked questions about gold<\/h2>\n
What does an eagle’s head hallmark on a piece of jewellery guarantee?<\/h3>\n
Is the eagle’s head on GSC bars that official hallmark?<\/h3>\n
Why do so many gold coins bear an eagle?<\/h3>\n
![Gold & Silver Company struck gold bar with eagle’s head in relief, FINE GOLD mention and Au 999.9 fineness<\/a><\/p>\n*On the house’s struck bars, the emblem becomes a hallmark: the eagle’s head in relief at the top of the blank.*<\/p>\nA logo lives on paper and screens; a hallmark lives in the substance. The difference is not slight: the first is replaced with the fashions, the second binds forever, since it is struck into an unalterable metal. On the house’s struck bars, the eagle’s head stands out in relief at the top of the blank; those who want to see the gesture in detail, down to the tamper-proof seal and the assay certificate, will find the full demonstration on the page of the 5-gram gold bar<\/a>, the smallest struck piece in the range.<\/p>\nA point of honesty, because we are sometimes asked: GSC’s eagle’s head is not the French legal hallmark, which remains the monopoly of the guarantee offices; it is the house’s striking mark, its engraved identity. The bar’s guarantee rests on three things: the Au 999.9 fineness engraved in the metal, the unique serial number of each piece, and the supervision of the assayer approved by the Royal Mint of Belgium. The eagle’s head says who struck the bar; the fineness says what it contains; the approved assayer attests that it is true.<\/strong> The eagle of 1838 watches over wedding bands; ours watches over bars. Between the two, the same promise kept by the same figure: in gold, you do not sign what you have not verified.<\/p>\nThe eagle and gold: the dates that matter<\/strong><\/p>\n| Date | Event |<\/p>\n| — | — |<\/p>\n| 1792 | The United States names its ten-dollar gold coin the *eagle*: the first and only modern gold coin named after the bird. |<\/p>\n| 1838 | The eagle’s head becomes France’s gold guarantee hallmark; today it certifies 750-thousandths gold. |<\/p>\n| 1849 | The California gold rush gives birth to the twenty-dollar *double eagle*. |<\/p>\n| 1986 | The American Gold Eagle joins the world’s great investment coins. |<\/p>\n| Today | Gold & Silver Company’s eagle’s head is struck in relief on the bars leaving Dottignies (Mouscron). |<\/p>\nFrequently asked questions about gold<\/h2>\nWhat does an eagle’s head hallmark on a piece of jewellery guarantee?<\/h3>\nIn France, the eagle’s head certifies 750-thousandths gold, in other words 18 carats, and it has done so without interruption since 1838. A jewel that bears it has passed the legal guarantee control: the hallmark is struck by the state guarantee offices, often inside the ring, and it is read under the loupe. For a buyer, it is the fastest possible verification, the one our experts perform first at the agency counter, before any weighing or testing. To learn how to read the other hallmarks and what each fineness means, our gold guide<\/a> details the full system, from the eagle’s head to the maker’s mark.<\/p>\nIs the eagle’s head on GSC bars that official hallmark?<\/h3>\nNo. The eagle’s head on our bars is the struck emblem of the house, its engraved identity, not the French state hallmark, which remains the monopoly of the official guarantee offices. The guarantee of a GSC bar rests on three verifiable elements: the Au 999.9 fineness engraved in the metal itself, the unique serial number assigned to each piece, and the supervision of an assayer approved by the Royal Mint of Belgium, who controls the house’s production. The eagle’s head says who struck the bar, the fineness says what it contains, and the approved assayer attests that the claim is true. You are welcome to verify all of this at the agency, by appointment<\/a>, with the bar in hand and the certificate in front of you.<\/p>\nWhy do so many gold coins bear an eagle?<\/h3>\nBecause the eagle is the emblem of the sovereignties that struck coinage. The United States went furthest: *eagle* is the legal name of their ten-dollar gold coin, created by the Coinage Act of 1792 and later joined by the *half eagle*, the *quarter eagle* and, in 1849, the twenty-dollar *double eagle*. Europe followed the same grammar: the imperial eagle on the German 20 marks, the double-headed eagle on the Austrian ducats, and the eagle with the serpent on the Mexican 50 pesos, one of the largest investment gold coins ever struck. Since 1986, the American Gold Eagle has extended that lineage for investors around the world. Wherever gold speaks the language of sovereignty, the eagle is never far away.<\/p>\nSarah, Director, Gold & Silver Company<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why our logo is an eagle’s head: what the eagle symbolises for a gold refinery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/img\/lingot5g\/fig-lingot-5g-blanc-1200.jpg\"){kind=link}