My Family Silver

The Maynard Dish, Paul de Lamerie, London, 1736/37,
which was sold in 1991 by Christie’s, London,
for the then world record price of £1.485m.
Upon its previous appearance at auction at
Sotheby’s, London, in 1970, it had realised £27,000.
(photo: Sotheby’s, London)

The world of antique English silver has been thrilled recently by a new auction record price. Lord Raby’s silver cistern, about which I wrote in my last blog, realised £2.2m when it appeared at Sotheby’s, London, on 6 July. Once it was established that this was indeed a new record, the inevitable question was: what was the previous most expensive piece of English silver to have appeared at auction? We had to look back to 1991 when Christie’s Silver Department, London, made the then world record  of £1.485m for a large Paul de Lamerie silver sideboard dish.

This remarkable tour-de-force of the goldsmith’s craft, now in the Cahn collection of de Lamerie’s work, is raised, cast and chased, its central cartouche enclosing the arms of Maynard, thought to be for Grey, 5th Baron Maynard (1679-1745). While the latter, whose plate included several other pieces from Paul de Lamerie’s workshop, remains a shadowy figure, his dish with its ‘lively figural border of figures emerging from richly chased natural settings and broken cartouches’ has been described rightly as ‘a key work of rococo silver’ (Ellenor Alcorn, Beyond the maker’s mark: Paul de Lamerie silver in the Cahn collection, 2006).

Notwithstanding that the dish bears de Lamerie’s mark, the identity of the artist responsible for its design and models remains a mystery. Recent writers suggest that he may have been a chaser, working for de Lamerie between 1737 and 1745. Indeed, this nameless genius has been dubbed the ‘Maynard Master.’

A detail of the border of the Maynard Dish, Paul de Lamerie, London, 1736/37,
thought to have been made for Grey, 5th Baron Maynard,
of whom a contemporary wrote, ‘was distinguished by his Sweetness of Temper,
and exemplary Patience and Resignation, in a lingering Illness.’
(photo: Sotheby’s, London)

For examples of Paul de Lamerie’s silver available through myfamilysilver.com, see a pair of sauceboats (1749) and a soup tureen (1747)

Lord Raby’s silver wine cistern,
maker’s mark of Philip Rollos senior, Britannia standard,
London, 1705/06,
engraved with the arms of Queen Anne,
which is to be offered for sale in the Treasures sale at Sotheby’s,
London, on 6 July;
weighing over 80kg (2,500 troy ounces),
and measuring 129.5cm (51in) over handles,
it is expected to realize between £1.5  and 2.5 million.
(photo: Sotheby’s, London)

Last week The Daily Telegraph published a photograph taken at Sotheby’s, London, of 19 month old Leo emerging happily from what looked like a silver bath. This was no gimmick, however, because the ‘bath’ was actually a 300 year old cistern or wine cooler which has been sent for sale and the photograph, complete with baby Leo, demonstrated to perfection the vessel’s enormous size. In fact, of the ten such cisterns made at the expense of the public purse during Queen Anne’s reign, this was the largest and heaviest.

Created between about September 1705 and 9 May 1706 in the workshops of Philip Rollos, this wonderful object has descended in the present owner, the Marquis of Lothian’s family since it was made. Even more extraordinary is that it has evaded the notice of connoisseurs of old English silver, including the late Dr Norman Penzer who in 1957 published a list of what he thought were all 25 or so surviving cisterns. Furthermore, it is only within the past  three months that the precise origin of the piece has come to light.

The cistern originally belonged to Thomas Wentworth, 3rd Baron Raby (1672-1739); it formed part of his allocation of silver and silver-gilt when Queen Anne’s Ambassador to Berlin between 1706 and 1711. The magnificent size of the piece, together with the noble effect of his other plate were calculated to add lustre both to Raby’s office and to him personally as a trusted representative of the British monarch.

Lord Raby’s great wine cistern recently in a photographic studio at Sotheby’s
(photo: Sotheby’s, London)

R. & S. Garrard & Co’s burnishers at work on the replacement Ascot Gold Cup of 1907,
which was delivered in August that year, about two months after the original had been stolen on 18 June
(photo from The Sphere, London, 20 July 1907)

Mark Twain, the American humorist and author of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, awoke one morning in June 1907 on the first day of a visit to England to find newspaper headlines proclaiming, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES – ASCOT GOLD CUP STOLEN. His waggish British friends took note.

The sensational theft the day before of the 500 sovereign cup was all the more embarrassing because it had vanished from under the noses of guards at the famous English horse race grandstand, one of whom was from Garrard’s, the Crown Jewellers, who had made the trophy. Besides, the cup had been paid for by King Edward VII and should have been the focus of all eyes on Gold Cup day, the most important of the racing calendar. It was never seen again.

The cup, 13 ¼ in high, comprised 68 ounces of 20 carat gold. Its design was in the style of similar early 19th Century racing trophies, Garrard’s craftsmen working from new drawings and a life-size model provided by their artist colleagues.

Enter Mr Twain. Shortly afterwards as guest of honour at a Savage Club dinner he was handed a parcel. It contained a copy of the stolen trophy in gilt plaster, with an incriminating note from a ‘partner’ who was supposed to have purloined the cup on the author’s behalf. The laughter subsiding, the replica was found to be exact in every detail except for the acorn top which had been replaced by a well-modelled bust of Huckleberry Finn’s creator.

artists at R. & S. Garrard & Co, working on the design and the model
for the Ascot Gold Cup of 1907
(photo: The Sphere, London, 20 July 1907)

A selection of items made by Garrard’s and its predecessors will be found on myfamilysilver.com, for which see:
George Wickes
Wakelin & Tayler
Garrard’s

an advertisement for Fribourg & Treyer, tobacconists, whose premises at 34 Haymarket,
into which the firm moved in 1781, has survived
(from a programme for the musical comedy Oh, Julie, Shaftesbury Theatre, London, summer 1920)

Pipe and cigarette smoking may court controversy nowadays but not so the collecting of smoking paraphernalia of the past. The range of items to collect seems limitless: printed ephemera abounds, of course, as our first illustration demonstrates, but so too do all sorts of objects in gold and silver, or those so mounted, intended for the use and pleasure of smokers. Indeed, Fribourg & Treyer were not alone among tobacconists to enter their own marks at the London Assay Office, in their case between 1908 and 1914. Besides cigarettes their stock almost certainly included cigarette and cigar cases and boxes, mounted cigar cutters and pipes as well as more exotic items like spirit lighter/burners and ashtrays.

During its long existence between 1721 and 1982, Fribourg & Treyer saw fashions in smoking and smokers’ equipment come and go. Particularly attractive to collectors are late 17th/early 18th Century silver tobacco boxes, some of which are engraved with their owner’s arms or perhaps an inscription recording their gift from one friend to another. A good example, Thomas Ash, London, 1705, is currently available at Alastair Dickenson Ltd.

Rarer are silver pipes, one of which – a long ‘churchwarden’s‘ – has appeared and is due to be sold at Matthew Barton Ltd. According to the journalist G.A. Sala writing in 1859, pipes of this type were then already out of fashion, even in ruder materials than silver. ‘But where, sir,’ he asked, ‘is the old original alderman pipe, the churchwarden’s pipe, the unadulterated ”yard of clay?”’

the crested bowl of a George III silver ‘churchwarden’s’ pipe, Joseph Taylor, Birmingham, 1809;
the slender stem comprises four screw-in sections and the overall length is 49.7cm

‘When is A Silver Cup most likely to run?’
a cigarette card from a series published by Lambert & Butler Ltd of London, early 20th Century

The answer to Lambert & Butler’s old chestnut of a riddle is, ‘When it’s chased.’ A slender twig upon which to hang this latest glance at old silver, perhaps, but consider the importance which the chaser’s art has always played in the decoration and finishing of plate. Even today, artist craftsmen like Rod Kelly exploit the technique to brilliant effect.

It may seem odd but in 18th Century London a display of silver was used to help young chimney sweeps and milkmaids beg for alms on May Day as they danced ‘in fine and fantastic attire’ through the streets. In 1776 Judge Samuel Curwen saw them in Ave Maria Lane carrying a pyramid-shaped ‘garland’ decked with a silver tankard and other plate, topped by a chased silver tea kettle.

In literature as in real life, ‘chased’ as applied to silver means highly wrought, noteworthy, often expensive, as when Oscar Wilde’s evil hero Dorian Gray hesitated to inform his guardians of the purchase of a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet set, because they could  not understand ‘that we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.’ How true; most of us are in thrall to the unnecessary. Who, for instance, really requires ‘A SUMPTUOUS TEA POT, with massive chasings’ representing a banquet and a combat of cavalry? But this arresting example from Edward Farrell’s factory (ex Duke of York’s collection, Christie’s, 1827) is typical of work that inspires admiration as much for its appearance as for its craftsmanship.

A George III chased silver tea kettle, Benjamin Brewood, London, 1761. For their May Day parade the milkmaids are supposed to have borrowed silver from pawnbrokers but it is worth remembering that many working silversmiths were in and around the City of London. Brewood, for instance, had premises near Fleet Street and towards the end of the 18th Century there were several well-established silver factories in Ave Maria Lane and nearby Paternoster Row.
(photo courtesy of Sotheby’s, London, 2002)

three unusual silver salts with gilt and oxidised decoration from Anthony Elson

myfamilysilver.com is brimful of old silver for all tastes, useful and ornamental, but what I didn’t realise until recently was that it is also a showcase for contemporary pieces.

Tim Lukes’s appropriately named ‘Drink like a fish’ parcel-gilt silver jug and beaker recall that brief spell in the late 1870s and 1880s when Tiffany & Co created a range of objects inspired by Japanese art and workmanship. With his designs, Mr Lukes has revived the idea to create original pieces which cleverly convey watery environments inhabited by golden carp.

The ‘Packet’ dishes for nuts and bonbons by Rebecca Joselyn, which look just like the silver paper wrapping of various lines of chocolate confectionery, are in reality much more sturdy. In her own words, she creates each individually by ‘crumpling them over a stake.’ The result is an amusing twist on an old idea: the trompe l’oeil effects of pre-revolutionary Russian ‘folded napkin’ silver, for instance. Another of today’s silversmiths with strikingly fresh  ideas is Malcolm Appleby, who famously lives and works in a former railway station.  His hand made and hand engraved ‘three sided’ bowl is typical of his work, with its richly textured finish contrasting the silver of its exterior with the deep gilding of its interior.

‘Coloured’ silver has always fascinated me, like the extraordinary salts made by Anthony Elson. Here he shows three: one silver-gilt and oxidised, another chemically oxidised a blue/green colour and the third similarly treated to create a beautiful blue hue.

Tim Luke’s parcel-gilt silver ‘Drink like a fish’ jug and beaker

‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies,’ a silver group made in the workshops of Joseph Angell, London, about 1850, inspired by Joseph Addison’s tale, which first appeared in The Spectator, 21 July 1711.
The much-loved character of Sir Roger would have been familiar to many, his exploits having been reprinted several times during the 18th and 19th Centuries. He also featured in Sir Roger de Coverley; or, The Merry Christmas, a dramatic entertainment produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1746; and in Sir Roger de Coverley; or, The Widow and Her Wooers, a drama at the Olympic Theatre in 1851. Furthermore, the artists Thomas Stothard (who sometime provided designs for silver to Rundell, Bridge & Rundell) and Charles Robert Leslie had both chosen ‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies’ as a subject for paintings, the latter winning praise for his at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1829.
(photo: unknown, circa 1853)

The production of so-called ‘narrative’ plate – pieces which ‘tell a story’ - was by no means confined to England, but it was in London during much of the 19th century that silversmiths produced some of the best examples. Scenes of bucolic peace or episodes from the myths of Antiquity had decorated silver cups, cream jugs and boxes and dishes for generations, but it was probably the appearance of Flaxman’s ‘Shield of Achilles‘ in 1821, with its wide border of figures inspired by Homer’s Iliad, that began a fashion for finely wrought objects that were intended to elevate mere silver and silver-gilt into precious works of art.

Rundell’s, the firm responsible for the ‘Shield of Achilles,’ was inevitably involved in the manufacture of other such pieces, such as the ‘Crecy Shield’ (William Bateman, London, 1834), but it was in the hands of Garrard’s and Storr & Mortimer/Hunt & Roskell’s designers and craftsmen that in the 1840s and 1850s the genre flourished. Both firms displayed magnificent examples at the Great Exhibition of 1851, most of which had been made as testimonials or race ‘cups,’ but a worthy, less celebrated entrant to this field was Joseph Angell. With his silver group, ‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies,’ made from models by John Henning junior, he had hit upon an old, familiar subject that with nostalgic warmth recalled the age before factories and speeding locomotives. As the Athenaeum remarked approvingly, ‘Mr. Angell could not have chosen a scene more thoroughly English than this.’

• Various items of interest are currently listed on myfamilysilver.com, including pieces from Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, William Bateman, Garrard’s, Paul Storr, Mortimer & Hunt and Hunt & Roskell

a silver jewel box, William Snelling Hawaday, London, about 1905
(The Art Journal, London, July 1905, p. 217)

Among the most accomplished of ‘gifted amateur’ working silversmiths who entered their marks in London in the late Victorian and Edwardian period was Gilbert Marks (1861-1905). His work, much admired during his short working life, is now eagerly sought by collectors interested in the Arts & Crafts Movement.

He was not alone, however; many others from  backgrounds far outside the trade were keen silversmiths, such as Alice, Countess Amherst (1854-1933), whose efforts in making small, spot-hammered plates are a great rarity. Another, more accomplished silver worker was Major Robert R. Woodhouse (1833-1912), father-in-law of the 3rd Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, who entered his first marks in 1890 and his last in 1906. He is known for a silver bell push and a two-handled tazza in ancient Greek style, which are likely to have been made as gifts for friends and family, as well as miniature pieces which eventually found their way into Queen Mary’s dolls’ house.

Another noted amateur silversmith was William Snelling Hadaway (1872-1941), an American citizen who lived in London from about 1897 until 1908, when he became superintendent of the Madras Government School of Arts in India. He is chiefly remembered for a number of silver objects with dolphins and other marine motifs, including a remarkable toilet set which, says The Art Journal (1905) was ‘designed for a special purpose.’ Both he and his wife, Jean, were enamellists, which accounts for the coloured plaques which sometimes enrich his work.

detail of an embossed, pierced and chased silver dressing table mirror frame,
from a toilet set decorated with blue and green enamel and inset with
chrysophrase and turquoise, William Snelling Hadaway, London, 1904
(photo: courtesy of Sotheby’s, London)

• A number of interesting enamelled items are listed on myfamilysilver.com.

Christmas pattern novelties in electroplate: left, a cake basket,
the handle formed as naturalistically enamelled berried holly leaves,
Mappin & Webb of Sheffield, 1895; and, right, a ‘Robin’ pattern folding
’satchel’ biscuit box, probably made in Sheffield by Fenton Brothers
(using William Staniforth’s patent), retailed by
the Goldsmiths’ Alliance Ltd of London, circa 1885

Secrecy in the silver industry, especially in London in pre-World War I days, is largely responsible for the difficulty researchers have in uncovering so much about this fascinating trade. Details of workshop practices, designers and design sources, even the names of craftsmen, from working silversmiths to chasers and engravers, are all but lost. With the publication of the first specialist periodical, the The Goldsmith (1869-1872), however, we begin to hear of such as the trade’s progress and the tribulations of bankrupt goldsmiths and jewellers. Concerns arising from regular financial recessions are voiced, by workshop owners and representatives of the retail sector; conversely there are perennial reports of busy times, particularly in the weeks leading up to Christmas, when overtime had men – and women and sometimes children – at their benches from dawn to dusk, seven days a week.

In spite of this, the demand for silver and electroplate in seasonal patterns appears not to have been very strong, although jewellers did a brisk business in New Year brooches: 1-8-9-6, say, in gold or platinum, embellished with brilliants and pearls. Plenty of these survive but collectors of silver would be lucky to find many Christmas style cake baskets or biscuit boxes. Some silversmiths, especially Russian (Sasikov) and American (Tiffany and Gorham), produced remarkable designs in ‘Arctic’ vases, cups, tubs and wine coolers, with icebergs, frostfalls and polar bears, but these patterns were intended to emphasise the suitability of a vessel’s use rather than any reference to Yuletide.

design for an ‘Arctic’ pattern vase in silver or electroplate in a photograph of the 1860s/1870s
from a trade catalogue issued by Maison J. Casses, Séguin & Co of Paris;
polar bears, probably after models by Eugene J. Soligny, who spent his
early career in Paris, also appear on various silver vessels made by
Tiffany & Co, New York, in the late 1860s and 1870s.

• various items from Mappin & Webb, Fenton Brothers, the Goldsmiths’ Alliance (formerly A.B. Savory & Sons),  Tiffany & Co and Gorham are currently listed on myfamilysilver.com
  

the Goodwood Cup of 1869, Edward Barnard & Sons, London, 1869, for the retail goldsmith, J.W. Benson of 25 Old Bond Street, London, ‘a magnificent Old English Silver Tankard and Cover, modelled by Mr. J.E. Boehm, the subject being taken from Frith’s celebrated painting of ”The Derby Day,” [it] is wrought out with consummate skill, both in the modelling and chasing, the figures being oxidized on a pearl white back-ground… (Jackson’s Oxford Journal, Oxford, London, Saturday, 31 July 1869, p. 3e)
The image on the right shows the piece as it was in 1977; that on the left as it probably originally appeared in 1869.
(photo: courtesy of Sotheby’s, London: Mentmore sale, 23 May 1977, lot 1666)

Looking at the photograph in my last blog of Hunt & Roskell’s display at the 1862 International Exhibition, one could be forgiven for thinking that the lighting was amiss; the silver is so snowy white. In fact, this image records perfectly how most display plate would have appeared . The prevailing fashion was to ‘colour’ silver in some way, either by frosting (as in the Hunt & Roskell display) or by combinations of gilding, partly gilding (known as parcel-gilding), pearling or oxidizing, the latter producing a black surface.

Techniques for colouring silver (and gold) were developed in antiquity and have been used in various ways ever since. In modern times, the silversmith’s everyday repertoire included interesting finishes for his work. Silver-gilt, because of its relative durability, has survived in great quantities; but silver objects treated with heat, acids or other agents to produce black, white and coloured tints are much more delicate. A rare 1760s, London-made blackened silver cup  appeared at auction a few years ago only to create confusion because its unusual colour was nearly mistaken for ordinary tarnish.

Some French and Russian silversmiths at the Great Exhibition of 1851 caused considerable comment for their unusual oxidized work, whereas English silversmiths relied mostly on the contrast of brightly polished areas juxtaposed with dead white frosting.

The possibility of colouring silver may not be familiar to many, but Richard Hughes and Michael Rowe have dealt splendidly with the subject in their book, The Colouring, Bronzing and Patination of Metals (1991).

two marine pattern silver salts in the manner of Nicholas Sprimont (1716-1771),
created with naturalistically-coloured silver crayfish and crab by Smith & Harris, manufacturing goldsmiths and silversmiths, London, and shown at the ‘Supermodels’ exhibition, Goldsmiths’ Hall, 2001
(photo: courtesy of Smith & Harris, London)

• various items from the workshops of Hunt & Roskell and Edward Barnard & Sons are currently listed on myfamilysilver.com