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…)

Willing to accept the newly rich as well as new designs, the gentry in early Georgian Britain swelled in numbers and indulged their spending urge — often to excess. This led many to ruin, but it also allowed craftsmen, designers and artists to make great reputations for themselves.

Merit, good fortune, education and patronage, corruption and service to the nation were among the varied means of advancement in mid- 1 8th century Britain. (more…)

Country-house life with the family was the ideal of Elizabethan and Jacobean gentlefolk. They could set themselves up with fine silver, rich textiles, lavish clothes and coveted goods from abroad.

A new kind of household had been established for people of power and influence by the mid-16th century.

No longer did they share a communal life with a motley assembly of officials, military supporters and other retainers. Now they lived in families in substantial homes on their country estates, some on lands that were previously owned by the Church, until they were seized after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 5536 and bestowed on supporters of the monarch as rewards for their loyalty. Some families had more than one estate. (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…)

Electro-plate produced during the nineteenth century may become as collectable as certain other pieces of Victoriana, and for the beginner in particular it has several other things to commend it. At the moment it is usually very reasonably priced. It is also interesting since it reflects the amazing conglomeration of styles which jockeyed with each other for a place of supremacy in Victorian fashion. Also, although the age of mass-production had established itself, some of the hand techniques used in the making of Sheffield plate or sterling silver wares were retained and used for some years on their electro-plated counterparts. The colour of early electro-plate, although not comparable with sterling silver or Sheffield plate, is also far more mellow than the harsh tones of modern electro-plate. Certain examples, particularly teapots and coffee pots, were quite robust considering their low cost then and now, and in some cases might even be described as sturdy compared with the lightweight objects produced today. (more…)

A few years after the turn of the eighteenth century the spoon eventually developed into the utensil which we use today. By 1720 its stem had become gracefully curved and terminated in a flat, rounded end which turned forward or upward and upon which it was rested on the table, so that the back of the bowl was uppermost in the French way. This Hanoverian rat-tail spoon continued in fashion for a few more years, the rat-tail gradually disappearing to be replaced by small droplets, either one or two, at the back of the bowl, or the increasingly fashionable scallop-shell, typical of the rococo period. The stem evolved into a flatter form, terminating by the 1760s in a curve which turned in the opposite direction to its predecessor, ie backward instead of forward, so that the spoon could be placed on the table with the interior of its bowl showing,as is still the custom in England and elsewhere today. This is termed the `Old English’ pattern and has been the basic form for spoons ever since. (more…)

Although the tea strainer was among the numerous pieces of domestic silver which did not generally make their appearance until the very final years of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century, the English tea table was not devoid of a utensil for a similar purpose. The tea strainer bore little resemblance to this predecessor and can in no way be said to be a development of it, unlike so many other items which evolved into utensils which we use today. Its forerunner was an extraordinary little implement called the mote skimmer, which was usually a little longer than a tea spoon. Its bowl was pierced in a simple pattern and its rounded, slender tapering stem ended in a point. (more…)