My Family Silver

Crestfinder seems to have tapped into a rich vein of public interest.

The popularity of the Family Heritage industry is well known in the UK but it is remarkable how many enquiries we are getting every day from visitors around the world (particularly in the US) seeking to identify their Family Crest.

I think the fascination stems from a human desire to visualise a surname as an image - a trotting horse for the Trotters, for instance! To then discover a piece of silver engraved with your Family Crest is deeply satisfying - and tempting!

Crestfinder currently only identifies British source crests, but over time more and more records on European and American heraldry will be added, allowing for the building 0f the world’s biggest online database for crest identification!

In the meantime, subscribe to our newsletter for updates and our team of researchers will  respond whenever possible to specific crest enquiries.

The dreaded credit crunch doesn’t appear to have reached the family history world.

Last week, I was at Who Do You Think You Are? Live in Olympia to value family heirlooms brought in by the (thousands of) visitors. More used to the scholarly calm of the annual antiques fairs at the same venue, I was staggered by the vast queue stretching around the building before the show opened.

Inside the aisles soon filled up as people crushed around the various stands promoting genealogical resources such as ancestry.com, findmypast.com and the National Archives. The family historians were a pretty ruthless lot (with sharp elbows) as they pressed forward with steely eyed determination onto the besieged experts. Unsurprisingly, most looked retired and of a certain age as it takes time (and money) to pursue such an obsessive hobby. You can of course, never know it all and one small lead can take you in unexpected directions.

The College of Arms was flying the flag for heraldry and I passed a happy few minutes watching an illustrator preparing a coat of arms on their stand. Otherwise, the subject seemed poorly served so I expect a flood of silver surfers when our site goes live in April as people drop in to find their family crest. One visitor who now knows what to look for is actor Kevin Whately who on the latest edition of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? was shown (to his evident surprise) a version of his crest on the tomb of an ancestor. He may not know, however, that the Whately crest, a Stag’s Head, is shared by dozens of other families thus giving Kevin an excellent chance, in time, of finding a nice piece of antique silver with it on at My Family Silver…..

Picking up my theme that canny silver buyers have never had it so good, Country Life excitedly reported this week (11 February) that “changes in lifestyle have wrought havoc with the silver market” despite a recent steep rise in the bullion value of silver from £3 to £6 an ounce.

Flying in the face of the strong results in a flurry of auctions before Christmas (reported elsewhere on this page) the magazine declares that “display silver isn’t fashionable”. The investment advice is to buy work by late twentieth century silversmiths such as Gerald Benney, Leslie Durbin and (my personal favourite) Malcolm Appleby. I don’t disagree that collecting post-war British silver is an enriching and potentially rewarding experience.

We are very keen to promote contemporary silversmithing on My Family Silver, hence our support of British Silver Week. But I do object to the oft-repeated stereotype that antique silver is somehow redundant as if a modern teapot is technologically superior to one made in the eighteenth century.  Country Life also states, without any evidence, that “abundant 18^th and 19^th century pieces have dropped in value significantly”. Well, I haven’t seen that but I do accept that there is an awful lot of silver out there looking for a new owner. The reason why? Our ancestors viewed their silver as a decorative addition to their domestic lives not, as we all too often do, as an expensive liability to be insured and (worse!) cleaned. We need to re-adjust our cultural approach to this wonderful material and get it back on the table and into everyday use. I do agree with Country Life on one point, however. Echoing my recent message, the magazine reports that “canteens of good cutlery…can be bought for less than the cost of new stainless steel - good news if you need cutlery”.

My question is, Who doesn’t?

There was a fire at the 17^th century College of Arms in central London on 5th February which served as a stark reminder of the fragility of historical documents. More info on the fire by the BBC and the Evening Standard.

Thankfully, none of the irreplaceable heraldic records stored at the College appear to have been destroyed in the fire. But their vulnerability to loss or damage is again revealed, as it was when faced with previous threats such as the 1666 Great Fire of London (when the original College building was gutted) and the Blitz (when the current building was badly bomb damaged).

Fortunately, on both occasions, the records had been moved to safety beforehand. In addition to its priceless contents, the College itself, which sits in splendour below St Paul’s Cathedral, is a rare treasure being one of the earliest surviving buildings in the City of London. Not that it hasn’t faced down its own threats.

In the early 19^th century there were plans to move the College to the more fashionable West End of London. Then in the 1860’s some typically ill-advised town planning drove the new Queen Victoria Street through the college buildings, destroying one side of the original quadrangle and slicing off the remaining wings. The digitisation of records (including our own small contribution at My Family Silver) will safeguard their knowledge but can never replicate their beauty.

There is also a growing debate among institutions about the projected lifespan of digital records. Even whether we will be able to access records saved now using technology which will be outdated in the future.

So, regardless of the convenience and utility of digital records, we will always need the original sources. Another reason, if needed, is to celebrate their recent close escape and the careful custodianship of today’s heralds.

To celebrate its return to our screens, I thought it would be fun to trace the crests of the celebrities profiled in the current series of BBC’s popular programme Who do You Think You Are? Beginning this week with Rory Bremner. According to Crestfinder, the Bremner family crest is A Cock’s Head Erased – very appropriate for a well loved entertainer!

Are there any celebrities crests you’d like us to search for?

If you live in the UK, did you catch the “Antiques Roadshow” on the BBC last weekend?

Among the usual family bric-a-brac and occasional gem, there was a rather intriguing antique silver tray bearing the maker’s mark of Paul Storr. As you already know but if you didn’t, Mr Storr was the mega-star maker of the late Georgian and Regency period. He was also the only English silversmith to rival Paul de Lamerie in the fame game.

The tray was engraved with a inscription explaining that it had been presented to a civic worthy in the market town of Hertford in December 1830. The tray was otherwise bog standard for this date i.e. it had a heavy cast border and feet with elaborate chased decoration. All, however, was not quite as it seemed.

As specialist Ian Pickford patiently and lucidly explained to the viewer, the hallmarks on the tray were in keeping with the inscription. They were struck in 1799/1800 at the height of the neo-classical period when it was quite impossible for such a highly elaborate tray to have been made. Still with me? This is exciting stuff!

So what had happened? Well, after gently pointing out that its obvious later alterations made the tray illegal (!) Ian suggested that an earlier Storr piece (possibly a salver or dish) had been cut up and used as the basis of the tray.

For me, this explanation begged a bigger question because Storr was still very much alive in 1830 and surely no other silversmith would perpetrate such an obvious fraud? I also think it is inconceivable, given the circumstances, that the good people of Hertford would have knowingly ripped off the recipient with a dodgy gift.

More likely I’m thinking is that they went to the best silversmith in London (i.e Mr Storr) to buy the flashiest piece they could. Unfortunately, their budget didn’t match their high ambition so maybe the renowned (but naughty) Paul Storr himself sold them this cut-price pup.

Scandal! Discuss! What do you think?

Building a website of the complexity and brilliance of myfamilysilver.com is quite a challenge, one that we are tackling with both hands to provide you with the best possible experience.

Writing books (my other hobby) seems like a walk in the park compared to collating, digitising and loading the details and crest images of some 40,000 families into the Crestfinder.

Fortunately, those clever web chaps at Datadial have not only achieved the seemingly impossible with their database skills but have also created a thing of great and lasting beauty. Thousands of crests come alive at the touch of a button. I can’t wait to let you loose on it nearer the time.

Even a heraldic amateur (like me) could spend hours of fun on it. Yet still, the benefits to the silver trade will be overwhelming. The icing on this considerably large and tasty cake will be the listing of regimental badges which will allow visitors to search for silver which is engraved with the badge of their old regiment. The interest in military history is huge so we expect this to be a highly popular addition to Crestfinder.

What is Crestfinder?

It’s one of the many innovations coming to myfamilysilver.com. It’s a one of a kind, purpose built database for the speedy identification of family crests by name or blazon! We’ll be talking more about the Crestfinder soon.

In closing, I’d like to pose a question to help us design the uploading of items into the site by our dealers. How many different, legally recognised standards have been used in the production of silver over the years? Obviously Sterling and Brittania in the UK, and 800 standard on the continent. But can you think of any more?

Meet me at the Miami Beach Antiques Show, 22-26 January 2009, http://www.dmgantiqueshows.com/ombas/visitors.html

I will be delighted to answer your questions and to discuss our exciting plans for myfamilysilver.com as we approach launch. To arrange a meeting please call 07708 667448 or email me at martyn@myfamilysilver.com

My Family Silver has announced a partnership with the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of lost or stolen works of art. Visitors to myfamilysilver.com will be able to register lost or stolen items on the database (subject to fee). The database is constantly cross-referenced to forthcoming auctions and dealer sales to facilitate the recovery of lost or stolen items.

The ALR’s pre-eminence in the field of stolen art has allowed the business to be instrumental in the recovery of over £160m ($320m, €230m) worth of stolen items.

myfamilysilver.com will be monitored by the Art Loss Register to offer security and peace of mind to visitors and dealers using the site.

One of the most pleasurable duties I have each month is to prepare a piece for the BBC Magazine Who Do You Think You Are?  My column investigates reader submitted family heirlooms: from First World War christmas cards to police truncheons! This month I was asked to offer further insight into two generations of eighteenth century London  silversmiths called the Brewoods. The request was made after a reader, having discovered his silversmithing ancestry, found an example of his family’s work via google - and immediately purchased it. Of course, from next year he will be able to search myfamilysilver for further examples! Read my article here: 

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