IX
CLOSE PLATING
CLOSE PLATING
THE BUCKLE MAKERS
GERMAN SILVER AND OTHER WHITE METALS
THE FACTORY SYSTEM
THE END OF THE STORY
CHAPTER IX
CLOSE PLATING
Close plating—The buckle makers—German silver and other white metals—The factory system—The end of the story.
Apart from the process of covering baser metals with silver by fusion and preparing sheets of copper superimposed with silver by rolling, there was the earlier process always designated as French plating. As we have shown, the plating of baser metals was nothing new, but the Sheffield process was a new invention which had far-reaching results. About the year 1800 a great many small articles in common use were manufactured by a method known as close plating. Knives, snuffers, skewers, buckles, spurs and harness were subjected to this means of silver plating. A great many of these articles have the name of the maker stamped upon them. Fruit knives, table spoons and forks, fish knives, sugar tongs, and in fact all small articles which it was easier to make in this manner than manipulate from the silver plated sheet.
Iron skewers were so plated with silver and steel blades of knives. An iron skewer made in Ireland is marked "Sly. Dublin," and the marks of the makers of the close plated work are as difficult to trace and identify as some of the others in the process of plating by fusion. Horday & Co. is found on some late examples, and the fleur-de-lys is another mark frequently seen. The close plating process seems to have been followed both at Birmingham and Sheffield from about 1795, and was subsequently employed in London. The base for close plating was mainly iron or steel. Instead of resorting to the longer and more expensive mechanical process of fusion and rolling, the article intended to be plated with silver was covered with a thin sheet of silver and while hot it was burnished down to the core of the baser metal, by means of a compound of lead and tin, which, employed at a low temperature, did not lessen the temper of the article thus plated.
It is to be observed, however, that the permanency of close plated articles cannot be compared with those produced under the rolling process. Whatever may be the reason there seems to be a weakness in the technique, for it is found that they are strongly affected by exposure to damp or extreme heat.
The Buckle Makers.—It has been asserted that Boulsover made buckles; this is unlikely. The trade had mainly settled in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and there was an extensive trade carried on in London. The fashion of the buckle underwent many vicissitudes in fortune. The Puritans adopted shoe strings. It was in Stuart days that Herrick sang of his mistress:
A careless shoe string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility.