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Mrs. Wright’s ‘Brown Betty’
On July 8th, 2009 myfamilysilver wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
Down among the leatherwork, embroidery and other contributions by amateur lady craftswomen to the Home Industries’ Exhibition at the Waldorf Hotel, London, in April 1908, Queen Alexandra was attracted to a little glazed earthenware teapot. This traditional ‘Brown Betty‘ was no ordinary article, however, because the exhibitor, a Mrs. F. Wright, had decorated it with a ‘perforated Silver Casement, beautifully designed, made in two parts.’ The point was that the silver mount could be removed for cleaning.
The mounting of ceramics and other materials was nothing new; splendid examples survive from all ages, including beautiful old Chinese vessels with late 16th Century European silver and silver-gilt mounts. More recently the enterprising London silversmith Joseph Angell experimented with the idea in his 1851 silver four-piece ‘Aesop’s Fables’ tea and coffee service, which had an intricate frosted silver ‘jacket,’ allowing for the use of the set to be either plain or decorated. Elkington & Co. Ltd., the patentees of the electroplating process, on the other hand, developed a method of imparting very thin silver cagework mounts by electro-deposition to fancy articles, chiefly glass. Not so popular in England, this type of decoration was enthusiastically employed by many American silversmiths.
In a modest way, Mrs. Wright achieved success with her patent (no. 28,295), no doubt encouraged by royal patronage, because examples are known hallmarked between 1908 and 1911. Indeed, she supplied the teapots in four sizes, with the mounts in a variety of patterns, priced between 12s. 6d. and £5 5s.
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One of Mrs. Wright's silver-mounted teapots from an advertisement, The Play Pictorial, London, 1909, no. 88, vol. XV, p. xxii
Mappin & Webb’s first electric kettles
On July 5th, 2009 myfamilysilver wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
Cudgelling my brain into action over this little essay, I decided to make a cup of coffee. With the freshly-boiled kettle in one hand and a mug in the other, it reminded me that heating water had not always been so easy. Turning to a copy of The Sketch, the London-based magazine without which no fashionable drawing room would have been complete during the course of its publication from 1893 to 1959, I rediscovered an editorial, signed ‘Florence,’ of October 1894 in praise of Mappin & Webb’s attempts at harnessing the power of electricity, ‘the fiery, untamed steed of earlier days,’ to produce silver and electroplate kettles, coffee pots and hot-water jugs.
Mappin & Webb, then probably second only to Elkington’s as the British Empire’s largest manufacturing silversmiths and platers, had taken a bold line in making these very up-to-date devices ‘for the comfort and convenience of modern sybarites.’ At prices from £5 and upwards, depending on design and material, they were certainly not aimed at ordinary housewives.
Elsewhere we learn that an early electric kettle was exhibited by the American Carpenter Electric Co at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, but this was by no means the first.
‘Florence’ found Mappin’s kettles ‘an altogether fascinating arrangement,’ but clearly the firm had to wait some years to reap the benefit of its enterprise.
Mappin & Webb's electric kettle and hot-water jug, The Sketch, London, October 1894
John Culme, who for many years has been connected with Sotheby's Silver Department, is author of several books and articles, including The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, 1838-1914, published in 1987, and co-author with Nicholas Rayner of The Jewels of the Duchess of Windsor. He is also a Liveryman of the Goldsmiths' Company, London.
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