Sillem & Co Seal, Image & Found by Gary Whellans.
Find location size and weight unknown.
Circle border on both sides, first containing SILLEM / & / Co and the second containing HAMBURG *
We know the company was a banking organisation (see below) but this gives us little clue as to the product this seal was attached to.
The history of the Sillem family can be found on their website here.
"Jerôme Sillem was a member of Heyn's branch of the family. News about the collapse of Napoleon's empire reached him probably in St. Petersburg where he lived with his wife Wilhelmine and five daughters. His four sons he had left in the care of his brother-in-law and sister-in-law living in Hamburg. At the same time he received a most attractive offer: the major shareholder of the banking company Hope & Co offered him to take over one third of the company's capital and also to become its director. Jerôme accepted and moved to Amsterdam with his family. Thanks to his dedication and his financial genius he established the company as a major player among the top European banks, well respected among his peers. In Hamburg he founded the company Sillem & Co for two of his sons, and invested both of them with a sum of 1,000,000 Bancomark each which stock exchange professionals considered to be an extraordinary sum at the time. His son Carl (1802-1876) who was to become the progenitor of all the Sillems living in Germany was not the best suited for the banking business - he would have preferred to become an agriculturist. His brother Wilhelm (1804-1885) who had been an apprentice at Hope & Co showed more skills in business but developed into a reckless speculator. His "showpiece" was to grant the Polish government a credit of dizzying height: pre-financing the year's harvest. The Polish used the money to finance a campaign against Russia. The Tsar's empire prevailed and Sillem & Co went bankrupt. Father Jerôme was devastated, and not only because of the financial loss. After all, he had been the Tsar's court banker! Jerôme did not live long after that. His son Ernst (1807-1861) became his successor at Hope & Co. He and his wife Henriette, a daughter of the mayor of Riga, became the founders of the Dutch branch of the Sillem family. There are more Sillems living in the Netherlands now than in Germany."
