In Girard College, Philadelphia, one may see a Sheraton sofa that once belonged to Stephen Girard, the founder. Sheraton himself describes one of his own sofas as follows:

A sofa done in white and gold, or japanned. Four loose cushions are placed at the back. They serve at times for bolsters, being placed against the arms to loll against. The seat is stuffed up in front about three inches high above the rail, denoted by the figure of a sprig running lengthwise; all above that is a squab, which may be taken off occasionally.

Sheraton also tells of the Turkey sofa “introduced into the most fashionable homes as a novelty, an invention of the Turkish mode of sitting. They are, therefore, made very low, scarcely exceeding a foot to the upper side of the cushion. The frame may be made of beach, and must be webbed and strained with canvas to support the cushions.”

It would be interesting to go on dwelling upon a subject so rich in lore, but I fear, so little studied. The author has generously refrained from the harrowing mention of haircloth, as he imagines there is little he could add to a subject that all readers are probably too familiar with already.

CHAPTER XX
SHEFFIELD PLATE

EVERY one is familiar with the name “Sheffield Plate,” and many have a vague idea as to what, superficially, marks its distinction; there are fewer, however, who know its story. It is interesting. A few years prior to the middle of the eighteenth century—1742 is the generally accepted date—there lived in a little house on Sycamore Hill in the English town of Sheffield an ingenious mechanic, Thomas Bolsover by name. His knife, which had a handle made partly of silver and partly of copper, had been broken, and one day in a leisure moment Bolsover took it to his attic room to repair it at the little work-bench he had fixed up there. In the course of this operation an unusual accident brought about the fusing of the copper and silver parts of the knife-handle. To Bolsover’s surprise he found the metals had cohered, forming a copper basis with a surface of silver.

To a stupid mechanic this would have given rise to no reflection, or only to futile and passing curiosity. To Bolsover it at once brought the reflection that a process developed by experiment from the results of this accident would be of definite utility. In view of the fact that the value of silver at that time was three times what it is to-day, the discovery of a substitute for the solid precious metal was of great commercial importance.

Bolsover was a cutler by trade and steel-working was Sheffield’s chief industry. So little silver-working had been attempted in the town that there was not even an assay office there; in fact, one was not established until some thirty years subsequent to Bolsover’s discovery and inventions. Although Bolsover was only a struggling workman, he had the good fortune of interesting a Mr. Pegge of Beauchief, who furnished him with the capital to set up a manufactory of articles produced by the new process. Buttons, buckles, snuff-boxes, and knife-handles were turned out from the new shops on Baker’s Hill. This business Bolsover conducted in conjunction with one, Joseph Wilson. During this period Bolsover was probably so concerned with his work and the manufacture of the small articles mentioned that it never occurred to him that his process was capable of greater developments. Changing conditions open new channels that are to be anticipated only by imaginative minds. Bolsover’s mind was, I think, less imaginative than of a generally intelligent and practical turn. It was sufficient for him, in all probability, that he had stumbled on material which would replace silver in the manufacture of the small articles that appealed to his commercial instinct.

The middle of the eighteenth century was a period in which only the very well-to-do could afford articles of silver for household use. The middle class still contented itself with pewter. It apparently remained for Joseph Hancock, a brazier who had been in Bolsover’s employ, to realize the possibilities of Bolsover’s copper rolled-plate process (as it was then and for a long time afterward called), as a suitable material for silverware. Hancock produced tea-pots, coffee-pots, candlesticks, tankards, waiters, and so on.