My Family Silver

‘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 Victorian silver table snuff box in the form of a mess tent, Joseph Angell, London, 1850, presented to Major Loftus Francis Jones on his retirement from the 96th Regiment of Foot. The gilt interior of this unique object is engraved with an inscription, recording the fact that Jones (d. 1853) had been with the regiment since its formation in 1824. (photo by courtesy of Sotheby’s, London, 5 March 1970, lot 89)

Recently someone asked me if I had a favourite among the many silversmiths whose work I had  examined over the years. My head spun at such a question! Few apart from my colleagues in the field have been so fortunate to handle so much, although even a casual museum visitor cannot fail to acknowledge the glorious legacy we have from silversmiths’ endeavours, past and present.

My answer to that question depends on so many factors, not least the latest fascinating piece I have been researching or cataloguing, in which case Paul de Lamerie springs to mind. Then again, certain silversmiths were specialists, like Thomas Pitts whose workshop was known for its epergnes, or Ebenezer Coker and the Cafes for candlesticks.

Under torture, I might have to admit that a favourite is the Angell family business of silversmiths which flourished in London throughout the 19th Century, particularly that of Joseph Angell (1816-1891) whose stock, some of which was enamelled, attracted so much attention at the Great Exhibition of 1851. An unusual example of the Angells’ silver, a special order, was a table snuff box in the form of a mess tent made for presentation by his brother officers to Major Loftus Francis Jones on his retirement from the 96th Regiment of Foot. Detachments of the latter having been deployed for convict ships heading for the Antipodes, The Courier, a Tasmanian newspaper, reported in February 1851 on Major Jones’s box, telling its readers that it was ‘elegantly wrought in frosted silver.’

• Various snuff boxes are currently listed on myfamilysilver.com, as well as other interesting items from Paul de Lamerie, Ebenezer Coker and William Cafe, and the Angells

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 16^th 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.

One of Mrs. Wright's silver-mounted teapots from an advertisement, The Play Pictorial, London, 1909, no. 88, vol. XV, p. xxii