Although hand skills continued, science and technology were advancing on all fronts. Pottery and porcelain were soon to prove a field for industrialisation. While British factories could not yet match Meissen and Sevres, attractive and popular pieces were made. Highly decorated soft-paste porcelain figures were still made by Chelsea (for tables, mantelshelves and cabinets), now with coloured and gilded scrolls instead of the earlier mounds forming the base. Tiny figures known as ‘toys’ were made to hold scent, needles and bonbons. Earthenware figures and Toby jugs were made in the Staffordshire potteries to appeal to a mass market. (more…)

While their homeland was Oliver Crom well’s Commonwealth, Royalists who had taken refuge in France experienced the French style of life. One of its features, which they copied on returning home after 166o, was the arrangement of rooms. The public, formal core of a house was the hall or vestibule and the main reception room, often called the salon (saloon) or great parlour. The private suite of rooms had its own slightly less formal reception room — the withdrawing room — which was an antechamber to the bedrooms. (more…)

Soft Touches

Carpets on the floor and curtains at the windows were rare through Elizabethan and Jacobean times — but carpeting and curtaining were profusely used for other purposes. Fine woollen fabrics, or silks and velvets from China and Italy were hung around the bed, while cushions and table coverings were often of harder-wearing turkeywork — wool knotted into a backing like Turkish rugs.

Many soft furnishings were made by the ladies of the house who worked pillowcases and bed coverlets, cushions and book covers, purses and bodices. Trellises set with flowers and animals wound across their fabrics. The needlewomen could use pattern books of motifs, pricking along the lines, then pressing powder through the holes onto the fabric. (more…)

Button-making was an important industry in its own right. By the 1770s it is recorded that over 80 master button-makers, producing all types of buttons, were working in Birmingham where button-making had been prolific for over 100 years. Sheffield plate was ideal for this purpose and had been used for button-making since it was discovered by Thomas Boulsover circa 1742. By the 1780s Birmingham button-makers produced large quantities of buttons and included among their numbers Matthew Boulton’s Button Company which was started in 1782. Sheffield plate had gained for itself such a good reputation as a substance for button-making that an Act was passed in 1796 which regulated the quality of metals used for buttons. (more…)

From approximately the earlier years of the 1770s separate parts of a vessel such as spouts or lids were stamped out using a drop-hammer. The piece of Sheffield plate would be placed upon a striking block which had a die sunk with a model of the required shape. Then the hammer, the face of which was raised with the same shape as the sunken die, was manipulated from above by a rope between two vertical rods and, as it struck the block, the Sheffield plate was stamped into shape. The parts would then be soldered to the vessel. The introduction of harder steels made possible more sharply-defined pieces and during the Regency period entire units were produced in this manner. Die-stamping was a very important technique, advances in it contributing greatly to mass-production methods in both silver and Sheffield plate. By the last decade of the eighteenth century larger, flat pieces such as trays were being produced in this manner, suitably ornamented as already described. (more…)

Registration of marks for plated goods virtually ceased after 1836 because the new British plate could not correctly be termed Sheffield plate as silver was not fused onto copper. Yet again manufacturers resorted to marking their wares with unregistered symbols which looked very much like hallmarks. After 1765, and more so following the turn of the nineteenth century, a crown was sometimes used in addition to other marks. This was originally intended to show that the piece was of good quality, and its use grew at the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to differentiate between English plate and cheap wares imported from France. Manufacturers used it increasingly throughout the nineteenth century until the public were in such a state of confusion, since it was also the mark for the Sheffield Assay Office, that its use was eventually prohibited in 1896. (more…)

Sheffield plate has grown considerably in popularity among collectors, and prices can, therefore, be high. Nevertheless, when bought with care it is a good proposition for both its beauty and usually its value as an investment. Although it is plated silver its attraction lies in the softness of its tone and generally the standard of craftsmanship is good, with the exception of certain later types of Sheffield plate and cheap imported plate. Sadly, the man who discovered the technique of Sheffield plate failed to grasp its full potential. Others were quick to do so, however, and for about 100 years between its appearance and its replacement by electro-plate in the following century, an enormous number and variety of wares was produced by this method. (more…)

Scottish silver

Scottish marks are known as early as the middle of the fifteenth century. By 1681 the goldsmiths of Edinburgh had adopted a variable date letter and abandoned the deacon’s mark instituted in 1457 for the mark of the Assay Master. This in its turn was substituted by a thistle in 1759. The town mark is a triple-towered castle.

Although there was an active group of goldsmiths in Glasgow, mentioned in records as early as 1536, no Glasgow silver earlier than approximately 1681 appears to be marked with anything but perhaps the maker’s mark and burgh arms: a tree with a bird on the top, a hand bell suspended from the branches and across or below the trunk a salmon with a ring in its mouth (termed the fish, tree and bell mark). (more…)

Despite the fact that the English hallmarking system is ancient and well-tested, it cannot be relied upon purely for the authenticity of a piece. Its very reputation, respected and revered the world over, makes it vulnerable to dishonest use by fakers and forgers. Transposing marks from one object to another is not an uncommon practice and can be very lucrative when the piece is sold for a high price. Genuine marks may also be removed from an older, damaged object and `married’ to a far later example. This is why experts will sometimes breathe on a piece for, by doing so, the outline of the joins which are invisible to the naked eye should reveal themselves. Certainly when the object is oxidised the let-in silver usually shows fairly clearly. This practice of transposition is not a new one and has been used for many years. (more…)

A knife and fork may seem the perfect combination by modern standards, but before forks came into general use the knife and the spoon were the two vital, complementary utensils which served the needs at table. While eighteenth century examples of knives with handles of cast silver are available at a very high cost, the expense involved in making these in the heavier-gauge silver means that most eighteenth century examples available today are of the thinner silver produced at the end of the century.

Forks were used increasingly in England after the Restoration. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has a two-pronged fork made in 1632, one of the oldest silver table forks, but this is a very rare example. (more…)