Circular form with two handles. The body divided into fourteen globular sections by repoussé work. Marked D✳S (Dixon & Sons). Date 1825. Height 4⅛ in. Base 37/16 in.
(At the Sheffield Public Museum.)
(Reproduced by permission of the Corporation of Sheffield.)
These basins were a later luxury of a more effeminate age. In 1711, according to the Spectator, in a "celebrated Coffee House near the Temple" an elderly ill-dressed man "called for a Dish of Tea, but as several Gentlemen of the Room wanted other things, the Boys of the House did not think themselves at leisure to mind him.... At last one of the Rascals presented him with some stale Tea in a broken Dish, accompanied with a Plate of Brown Sugar." We are not concerned with the rest of the story, how the old stranger found his son in the well dressed habitué of the House, and exclaimed "Hark you, sirrah, I'll pay off your extravagant Bills once more, but will take Effectual care for the Future that your Prodigality shall not spirit up a parcel of Rascals to insult your Father." But we are interested in the "stale Tea in a broken Dish," and the "Plate of Brown Sugar" excites our curiosity inasmuch as it comes as a surprise to learn that other sugar was then in use; possibly it was candied on strings as we remember it in our boyhood at the table of an old-fashioned prelate and recluse. But centrifugally whitened and crystallized sugar it cannot have been, for that belongs to days within memory. A later example of sugar basin with melon-shaped body is in date about 1825 and its bold handles are finely ornamented. The rim and the foot have a pleasing contour following the fourteen sections of the repoussé body (illustrated, p. [213]). It was made by Dixon and Sons, and the mark is a star with the letters D and S on each side.
VII
SOUP TUREENS
HOT WATER JUGS
THE MARKS OF THE MAKERS
THE SUPPER TABLE
CHAPTER VII
Soup tureens—Hot water jugs—The marks of the makers—The supper table.