Chats on Old Sheffield Plate

by Arthur Hayden

Those who have witnessed the cabinet-maker in the exactitude with which he commands his mastery over glueing parts, as is experienced in the manufacture of air-craft parts, know that given perfect conditions of temperature and glue of indubitable character the parts cannot be separated. Similarly in the Sheffield plating the silver adhered to the copper base and remained a component part and not a layer likely to be disturbed by future bending or hammering.

The next stage in the process was the process of passing these blocks under steel rollers in the rolling mills. And during this operation it underwent several further stages of heating or annealing. Here again the workman has to ascertain to a nicety the exact moment to discontinue the firing, otherwise all would be ruined and the silver be burnt off the face of the copper. In glass blowing similar technical difficulties render the art one of great rapidity and quick judgment. At the last stage, by an act of misjudgment, all the previous work might be wasted and the piece turn out a wreck. The fire is a capricious agent. In pottery it is the same. Many a vase after being elaborately painted by the artist and fired in the ovens, owing to some accident, comes out a distorted and misshapen mass.

The result of this Sheffield plating was to produce a sheet which could be manipulated in the same manner as though it were solid silver. The interiors of vessels, it is true, showed the copper, but these were tinned till at a later date silver was placed on both sides of the copper and fused at the same operation in the furnace. In regard to the ornament a good deal found on old Sheffield plated ware was made by the use of dies, such as feet, handles, knobs, and were cast in two halves and soldered together prior to being affixed in their positions on the articles. In other forms of decoration similar to that found on the silver plate of the day the same technique was employed in the repoussé work in producing a raised design on the exterior, that is, by means of hammering against a sand-bag, using a tool on the inside of the vessel. Chasing and engraving is done on the outside while the vessel is filled with sand or with some other composition.

This technique is not confined to Sheffield plated articles; it is the technique of the silversmith, where repoussé work receives its striking force by a tiny hammer from within the vessel; chasing with sunk lines, and elaboration and finishing the repoussé design, is done from the exterior.

In regard to designs, the productions duplicate some of the finest plate. At its best Sheffield plate realized its artistic responsibilities. It did not disseminate shoddy imitations of English plate. Its copies had the saving grace of being executed by men who understood the value of the originals. They worked faithfully in a more economic medium, but they did not debase the original design, and they were too clever to add meretricious touches of their own and mar work which they must have loved or they could not have copied it so truly.

Joseph Hancock of Sheffield.—Thomas Boulsover claims our regard for his invention and his steady application to it on a minor plane. But Joseph Hancock took longer views. He was a member of the Corporation of Cutlers in Sheffield, and he it was who saw to what great uses the new invention could be put if handled on a great scale. He made candlesticks, teapots, salvers, and many other more important articles, and by so doing he raised the process above the snuff-box and button level and established commercially the great industry for which Sheffield has become famous.

Mills were erected for rolling out the ingots, skilled workmen were procured who had served their apprenticeship as silversmiths in London and elsewhere. Sheffield, almost concurrently with the great impetus given to the making of plated silver ware, began to make silver plate. But such solid silver had to be conveyed to London to receive the marks of the Goldsmiths Company of London to denote its standard quality. In regard to embarking on so novel an enterprise as raising a great industry founded on the designs of the silversmiths, there must have been many forebodings as to legal possibilities. The laws on the subject were very stringent. Persons had been fined and imprisoned in the reign of George II for manufacturing plate of lower value than the standard. In 1741 one Drew Drury of London stated that he was inadvertently concerned in making a stamp resembling the "Lion Passant," that he had never made any use of it, and that he had caused it to be broken. The Wardens of the Goldsmiths Company did not accept his confession and proceeded against him.

Among exceptions not required to be assayed were metal spouts to china, stone or earthenware teapots and shirt buckles or brooches. But silver shoe-clasps, patch boxes, salt shovels, tea strainers, caddy spoons, bottle tickets (wine labels), and all buckles except the above mentioned were, if silver, to be assayed.

It is remarkable to find the Sheffield silver platers somewhat incautiously flying in the face of the protective legislation in regard to silver plate and its marking. In fact, it appears that they recklessly placed three marks on some of the earlier ware resembling those on silver plate. In 1773 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the manner of conducting the several assay offices in London, York, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. York, Exeter, and Norwich, it was found, were not in operation and had closed down. In regard to evidence a Mr. W. Hancock, a silversmith of Sheffield, said that his work had been injured by scraping. He went to the Goldsmiths Hall of London and "gave some drink to the Assay Master and scraper, since which time his plate had been less damaged." Mr. Spilsbury said that scrapers had the opportunity to deliver to the assayer better silver than they scrape from the work, and that the assayer had the opportunity of favouring what silversmith he pleased. When his plate had been objected to he found that these difficulties were removed on "giving drink at the Hall." This may be said to have been in keeping with the old tradition of the Goldsmiths Company of London, for we read that in 1359 one of the members of the Fellowship was found guilty of mals outrages. He prayed the mercy of the Company and offered them ten tuns of wine. He was duly forgiven on paying for a pipe of wine and twelve pence a week for one year to a poor man of the Company.

The Committee in their Report found in regard to Sheffield and probably Birmingham that "the artificers are now arrived at so great a perfection in plating with silver the goods made of base metal, that they very much resemble solid silver, and that if the practice which has been introduced of putting marks upon them somewhat resembling those used at the assay offices shall not be restrained, many frauds and impositions may be committed upon the public."