Another is the maker’s mark, which has been required since 1363. This mark is now always the maker’s initials, but once was more often his trade symbol.
In 1478 a system was adopted of dating each piece assayed by stamping it with one letter of the alphabet. For this purpose a twenty-letter alphabet is used, the design of the letter or of the surrounding panel being changed every twenty years.
Finally, the mark of English sterling standard fineness—a lion passant—has been used (with one twenty-three-year interruption) since 1544 to certify that the metal is 92.5 per cent pure silver. English silver rarely bears the word “sterling,” which is commonly found on modern American silver and on that made in some other countries for sale to Americans. Hallmarking of British goldware is somewhat different.
Colonial American silversmiths did not adopt the elaborate marking tradition of the Old World. In the English colonies no legal requirements existed for marking of any kind, the guild system was not transplanted, and until 1814 there was not even an assay office. So colonial smiths put only their own mark on their work. At first this was composed of the maker’s initials only, but later became more often his surname, with or without initial. Some smiths also used a symbol—John Coney the figure of a rabbit, for example—but this was comparatively rare. Of the Williamsburg silversmiths we have positive or presumed maker’s marks of only two—James Geddy and Alexander Kerr.
THE GEDDY SHOP AND THE GOLDEN BALL TODAY
Two reconstructed silversmithing shops in Williamsburg once more stand in the same spots occupied by similar establishments in the eighteenth century. Both are operating craft shops where skilled workers in costume produce articles of gold and silver using methods and tools like those employed by James Craig, James Geddy, Jr., and other Williamsburg silversmiths two centuries ago. For reasons important to twentieth-century visitors, a partial division of functions has been established: The making of jewelry and smaller silver items and engraving are emphasized at the Golden Ball; the casting of silver (done at the Geddy Foundry along with founding in other metals) and the making of larger pieces, particularly hollow ware, are more prominent at the Geddy Shop.
The original structure at the site of the Golden Ball, possibly built in 1724, remained standing until 1907, undergoing repairs and alterations from time to time. Craig had his shop in the western portion for a period before 1765, renting the space from James Carter, surgeon. In that year he bought the western fifteen feet of the house and lot, and the next year acquired the rest of it. After Craig’s death the building served its succeeding owners as a residence. The recollections of several old inhabitants of Williamsburg, a faded photograph, deeds, tax records, insurance policies, and excavated colonial brick foundations have all provided clues in reconstructing the building to its original outward appearance and inward room arrangement.
As for the shop itself, it has been designed and equipped—insofar as careful research and discerning imagination can make it—as it might have been in James Craig’s day. Lacking any descriptive material on the contents of the Golden Ball, the architects and curators have had to draw on other sources. The forge, for example, was designed and built in the image of forges described by Benvenuto Cellini and pictured in Diderot’s Encyclopedia. Some of the wall cabinets were made in imitation of those on display in European craft museums.
Much the same may be said of the Geddy Shop. Whereas the two-story, ell-shaped house dates to about 1750, the two shops of one and a half storys extending to the east of the house are reconstructed on original foundations still in the ground. James Geddy, Jr., probably worked on the premises before 1760, when he bought the house and lot from his mother. He rented out the easternmost shop but continued to practice silversmithing—presumably in the middle shop—until 1777 when he moved away and sold the property.
Since no records survive as to the interior arrangement or contents of the shop, the architects and curators have again had to use their best judgment and the most appropriate precedents and parallels in designing and furnishing the shop. While none of the silversmithing tools now used in either of the two shops are those of James Craig or James Geddy, Jr., some of them may have belonged to an English silversmith of the eighteenth century by the name of George Wickes. One particular tool, a square “stake” or anvil, displayed in the Geddy Shop, once belonged to Paul Revere. It was given to Colonial Williamsburg by Mrs. Francis P. Garvan, whose husband’s outstanding collection of American silver is housed at Yale University.