Unadorned simplicity still inspired serious designers but the ever- younger mass of consumers with the spending power imposed their own taste for ease and, above all, fun.

Victorious and wealthy, the United States emerged from the Second World War in 1945 as the most powerful nation, and its influence spread quickly across much of the globe. The USA was the world leader in industrial technology, and was also the main maker of films, whose images of style and manners fed the dreams and aims of the Western world’s cinema-going millions. (more…)

Comparatively few teapots were made in England before the eighteenth century and these are now exceedingly rare. As the fashion for drinking tea spread, the demand for the right kind of vessel in which to brew it brought about new types of containers for sugar, milk and tea. These tea accoutrements were made increasingly throughout the eighteenth century until, by the final decades, they had become an important branch of the silversmith’s work. Late seventeenth century teapots are unique and are mostly seen in museums. Outstanding among them is the historical conical-topped teapot (1670) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, with the spout quaintly set at right-angles to the handle, a practice which was short-lived. Another shape of this early period looks like a melon or similar fruit. (more…)

Inkstands

Inkstands (standishes) were much favoured in both sterling silver and, from about 1760, Sheffield plate. Silver examples include the treasury inkstand: a rectangular box which contained an inkpot, pounce box and wafer box — a small adhesive disk for sealing letters — with a single- or double-hinged lid and perhaps a drawer below for quills. Another type, made in both silver and Sheffield plate, consisted of a rectangular tray, standing upon four small feet, which had three sockets. In the case of the silver version, the inkpot and pounce box would fit into the outer two sockets, while the middle one would contain a small hand bell, or taperstick for sealing. (more…)

DECANTERS

Whenever I see a row of decanters in an antique shop I wonder how long it will be before there is a rush to buy them up. I know that many of these are quite ordinary, very cheap affairs, turned out by the hundred thousand in the last fifty years; all the same there are many fineones among them, and not at all dear in comparison with other glass.

It would be an interesting thing indeed to make a collection of decanters which showed their development in colour and in shape through the years, the different sorts of processes they were made in, also the different kinds of decanters used for different purposes. For me the obvious way to arrange these would be on open shelves against the light—but before one makes up one’s mind about that it might be as well to look and see what sort of decanters one can find. (more…)

Probably we could not do better than go around a dining- room and see how it was used. There will be plenty of it, and probably most prominent of all, hanging in the centre of the room a great chandelier, with scintillating lustres or “brilliant drops.” Few of those seen in the shops today will have survived intact from the eighteenth century without repairs or replacements, but they are still magnificent things, and must have looked glorious in the light of a multitude of candles.

On the tables themselves will be candelabra, with slender branches carrying the candle-sockets, sometimes diamond- cut or scalloped, with heavy bases for stability. There will also be those near relatives which started as simple “vase candlesticks,” later to become girandoles with fringes of hanging lustres and finally to evolve into the coloured glass lustre vase of the Victorian mantelshelf. (more…)

After boxes and caskets, let’s look at bottles. Bottles for scent and smelling salts, pomades and creams, for snuff, medicine, wine, beer, spirits, acids—in other words for everything that needs a stopper rather than a lid. Like boxes, they come in every sort of material, from porcelain to silver, from gold to stoneware.

I believe that one of these days collectors will wake up to the fact that the last hundred years has been the making of more collectable bottles than at any other period of history. Glassmakers, metalworkers, potters, and now plastic manufacturers, have been designing and making bottles, not only as lovely works of art and craftsmanship, but as mass production items which nevertheless are examples of excellent and interesting design. The astute collector will therefore look not only at the exquisite things of the past with which we start our brief review of bottles, but also at what has been made in the last century by the factories. Much of this is now beginning to take on that interesting look of the once commonplace thing which no longer does its original job, and which has acquired a new strangeness, even beauty, in our eyes. (more…)