WEDGWOOD CREAM WARE DESSERT CENTREPIECE.
Designed from Josiah Wedgwood's collection of shells.
(In the Museum at Etruria.)
(Reproduced by the courtesy of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.)
The illustration (p. [37]) shows the competitive repetition of design contemporary with Sheffield plate. The potter found earthenware, covered with a fine platinum glaze, was a colourable imitation of silver plate. If the squire had his plate and persons of lesser degree more economically inclined had their Sheffield plate, the cottager could have a fine, glittering array of silver lustre vessels. Nor was the glass-worker behindhand in coming into the field, as the illustration shows.
Early Plating.—In early days silver was used sparingly before the Spanish fleets from South America had poured silver into Europe. Ancient drinking vessels of wood such as the mazer, a drinking bowl much like a punch bowl, were decorated with silver bands. Cocoa-nut cups were similarly decorated. By the end of the sixteenth century, solid silver had replaced most of these forms for use in the spacious days of Elizabeth. The early records show that certain goldsmiths were guilty of mals outrages. In the fourteenth century gold was debased by mixing it with glass, silver by adding lead or fine sand. Latten and brass vessels were silvered and passed off as being of solid silver. One Edward Bor in 1376 was summoned before the mayor and aldermen of London to make answer "that he had silvered 240 buttons of latone and 34 circlets of latone for purses called gibesers (gipcières) and had maliciously purposed and imagined to sell the same for pure silver in deceit of the people"; both he and a confederate one Michael Hakeneye were sent to Newgate prison. Another case of John of Rochester in 1414 is recorded where he counterfeited mazer bands in copper and brass, plated over with silver.
It is interesting to read that "no artificer nor another other man shall gild nor silver any such locks, rings, beads, candlesticks, harness for girdles, chalices, hilts nor pommels of swords, powder boxes, nor covers for cups made of copper or latten, upon pain to forfeit to the King one hundred shillings every time, and to make satisfaction to the party grieved for his damages. But that (chalices always excepted) the said artificers may work ornaments for the Church of copper and latten, and the same gild or silver, so that always in the foot or some other part of such ornament the copper and latten shall be plain, that a man may see whereof the thing is made for to eschew the deceit aforesaid."
As to the hall marks on silver[2] the series of Acts of Parliament relating to the assaying, marking and regulating wrought plate and ascertaining the standard "for the good and safety of the public," covers a long period. British hall marks possess a reputation extending over three hundred years. Heavy penalties were exacted for fabrication of marks. In France in 1724 an edict was passed declaring sentence of death against those who counterfeited stamps or insert or solder stamps on other plate.
[2] See Chats on Old Silver, by Arthur Hayden, pp. 25-63.
