Remains now to take a look at some of the oddments around the room, which you might call furnishing accessories. The two odd-looking objects are knife boxes or cases. They date from times when silver cutlery was highly expensive in relation to servants’ wages and no householder would have dreamed of allowing the staff to take the silver out into the kitchen for washing. So after every meal the footmen were made to wash the cutlery in the dining-room, under the eagle eye of the butler or housekeeper—if not of the hostess herself. Water for this purpose was usually provided in one of the pedestal cupboards at either end of the sideboard. The idea of arranging the holes for the knives in rows was that by running an eye over the serried ranks of handles you could see at once if any were missing; if all were in order, the case could be locked and the key firmly kept by someone in authority, probably on the housekeeper’s jangling reticule.

There are, as you see, two quite different shapes. The earlier types, which first appeared at the end of the seventeenth century, were rectangular, with sloping lids and semicircular or serpentine fronts. They were usually of walnut and, later, mahogany with silver mounts and inlay. They stood in pairs on sideboards or side tables.

Antique Collector MagazineToday you often find these boxes, their insides ripped out, fitted up as stationery cabinets with compartments for writing paper and envelopes. Very ornate ones, of course, make a good price, especially when they come in pairs and are veneered with the more expensive woods. But plain mahogany ones are to be found for a few pounds, and very handsome accessories they are. If you look hard you may find a specimen which is japanned or painted.

The second shape occurred during the fashion for classical urns from about the 1770’s. These really did set off a sideboard, and often came in sets of three, with a shorter one in the middle for spoons. Ours shows how the specialist knife-case makers (they were not usually made by the cabinet-makers) got over the difficulty of hingeing a circular lid : a shaft rises from the centre of the piece, and the lid can be lifted or lowered on this.

Trays of all kinds make good collecting. Our illustration shows one in Pontypool or Usk ware, and in fact echoes the old simile about a thing being as “round as a Pontypool waiter”. Trays were not only called “waiters” in their time but also by the rather distressing sounding word “voiders”—a term meaning something you used to clear away or “void” from the table the scraps and used plates and dishes.

But some of the finest examples of the Pontypool or Usk ware are to be found (though not without a long search!) in the handsome tea trays, with their grounds of green, sapphire, puce, and orange, painted and gilded in the most attractive way. Some, indeed, carry finely painted views or portraits, but these are very hard to find indeed.

Papier-mâché also came in very strongly on trays. They were among the first things to be made in the original “paper ware“—whereby the body of the tray was made up from layers of paper rather than the paper pulp used in the later ware. Here the decoration followed very much the same lines as the japanned iron-ware, for these industries developed alongside each other in Victorian times, often using the same painters. At first the designs were mainly floral, and there were also some fine Chinese patterns, with rocks, tree trunks, pagodas, etc. But all kinds of painting eventually came to be used—landscapes, sporting and coaching scenes, genre pictures after artists like Morland, Landseer and others. These trays, quite apart from their function at the tea table, could be proudly and effectively displayed at the back of a sideboard.

There were a variety of shapes. Small round “waiters” were used for offering a glass of “port wine” or a letter; there were deep ones for carrying bread. Card trays usually had ormolu handles, and there were candle-snuffer trays in the same shape as those of silver and Sheffield plate. Names were given to shapes : the “Gothic” had a straight gadrooned or scalloped edge, and was subdivided into three, “Sandwich Gothic” having flattened rim-edges, while shallow curves were featured on “King Gothic” and bolder ones on “Queen Gothic“. An oval tray with a turned-over rounded edge was called a “Windsor”, while a “Victorian” was small and round with little semicircles round the edge. A parlourmaid’s tray had a curve in front so that she could carry it close to her body and so better take the strain of a heavy load.

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Knife Boxes and Trays