A Bid for Continental Trade.—The series of illustrations reproduced throughout the volume show that Sheffield was organized and fully equipped as an art industry, ready and competent to seize foreign markets. To those who imagine that the Sheffield silver plating process was something comparatively trivial, wholly imitative, and more or less of little moment in reckoning the eighteenth century art industries in England, this should come as a shock. We do not remember that Worcester or Derby, Chelsea or Bow, our much vaunted porcelain factories, ever had much relationship with the Continent in the way of trade. Wedgwood did, and the other Staffordshire potters did, because they were more organized than the porcelain factories. It is interesting, therefore, to find that on the Continent a demand had arisen for English metal work. The metalsmiths on the Continent were by no means deficient in originality. For centuries in Italy and in Holland, in Germany and in France, some of the finest workers in gold and silver, in brass and iron, artists in jewels and in enamel, had won a great renown. It is somewhat flattering to find that the foreigner saw, what perhaps was less recognized in the country of its origin, that the work of the Sheffield silver platers stood on a plane apart. And their flattering attentions were not only confined to purchasing replicas of fine English silver. Whether they bought it as being useful from a trade point of view to copy English silver designs, as a short cut to getting fine models, or whether they loved it for its own sake as a cheap and as a beautiful reproduction of fine designs, we cannot determine, but they did the Sheffield platers the honour of copying their technique and there are some fine examples of their work. In France, plated ware in the Sheffield manner was manufactured. We illustrate a coffee pot of no mean design (p. [211]) of French workmanship, and it is stated that in Holland and in Russia similar imitations of the Sheffield technique were made. Special marks were compulsory for this plated ware in the country of its origin in order to prevent its sale as solid silver plate. Two French marks illustrated (p. [291]) show the words Doublé (copied) or Plaqué (plated) together with figures denoting the quantity of the silver.
V
CAKE BASKETS
DECANTER STANDS OR COASTERS
DISH RINGS
INKSTANDS AND TAPER HOLDERS
CHAPTER V
Cake baskets—Decanter stands or Coasters—Dish rings—Inkstands and taper holders.
As the days wore on at Sheffield the technique, as collectors know, became amazingly perfect. The silver wire following the intricate outlines of a vessel disguising the raw edges of the copper, was used in a manner unequalled by the craftsman in silver plate because he had no need of such artifices to conceal in his technique the poverty of the base. He was working in a solid metal where no base metal at every conceivable point thrust itself into prominence. He could engrave deeply with no possibility of going too deep and betraying the shining copper. His applied ornament was solid silver, and here the Sheffield plater runs parallel in regard to die work and soldering parts together. But, in all, the Sheffield plater was more skilled, his die work is delicate and exhibits no noticeable trace as to its extraneousness. He may be compared with the artist in veneer of the same or an earlier period. The perfection of applied veneer and the exquisite skill employed by the cabinet-maker in covering oak with fine figured mahogany is unsurpassed. Veneers have in modern days been so skilfully made until they are no thicker than a cigarette paper, the modern glue and the modern processes have worked on scientific lines, although in many respects they have not outrivalled the old worker in veneers. Similarly, in Sheffield plate, the great note of exclamation, surprising and wonderful, is at the wire edged work, the handling of dies in a subtle and delicate manner, and the great result produced by a difficult technique. Stage by stage the Sheffield platers increased their facility for cunning handicraft. Machinery they had, and clean-cut differentiation of task. In fact the various branches soon became specialized in such a great industry. There were the die sinkers, and the workmen who fashioned dies and the workmen who fitted them ingeniously in position were others than those who soldered candlesticks together. The candlestick makers became a separate industry. Piercing and cutting, and the designs for this craft, soon became separate and were carried to a great point of perfection. Chasing as a craft and the designs for chasing as an art it may readily be believed formed another separate branch. From the preparation and fusing of the copper and silver, the rolling of the ingot, to the later stages of artistic technique, so great and extensive an art industry systematized itself into component working parts. But through it all runs like a silver thread the intensity of the magical working of wire. Wire, unheeded by the tyro but beloved by the connoisseur, converted copper and silver, with its too obvious copper edge into solid plate to all appearance. It duplicated all with which the silversmith could endow his plate and it represented toil and infinite pains, the genius of Sheffield, in producing results which are unequalled as tours de force in metal technique.
OLD SHEFFIELD PLATED CAKE BASKET.