Silver in London: the Parker and Wakelin Partnership 1760-1776

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by Pippa Shirley

Silver in London: The Parker and Wakelin Partnership 1760-1776 Helen Clifford Yale University Press 50 [pounds sterling]/$85.00 ISBN 0 300 10389 1

In 1952, Arthur Grimwade, the highly-respected doyen of English silver studies, stumbled upon a set of business ledgers recording the activities of an eighteenth-century London goldsmiths firm, George Wickes, which later became Parker and Wakelin. How and why this came about is now the stuff of legend in the silver world, but the reality is that, thanks to the far-sightedness of Grimwade and a handful of fellow silver specialists, including N.M. Penzer, John Hayward and Charles Oman, the ledgers eventually found a home in the Archive of Art and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

These extraordinary survivals, still with us through a serendipitous combination of good luck and good judgement, are the foundation of this excellent book. In analysing the business accounts as presented in the firm's so-called 'Gentlemen's' and 'Workmen's' Ledgers, Helen Clifford opens up the fascinating world of the eighteenth-century London goldsmith, and indeed the city itself, revealing everything from clients and patrons, subcontractors and workmen, the financing of the business and networks of supply and demand to changing patterns of fashion and use. In doing so, this book becomes much more than a history of trade in a particular material. It gives an insight into what and who was driving an increasingly consumer society.

The author takes 1760 as her starting point--the year when John Parker and Edward Wakelin took over the firm--and in so doing, builds on Elaine Barr's pioneering account of the early years of the business, George Wickes 1698-1761: Royal Goldsmiths (1980). The book begins with an introduction to silver and its place in mid-eighteenth-century England, setting the ledgers in their context as business records, before embarking on an account of Parker and Wakelin's partnership. They were an ideal combination--Parker, at only twenty six, had been apprenticed to Wickes for the previous nine years, and Wakelin, a much more experienced forty two, had been Wickes's principal supplier for most of the previous two decades. They were also taking over a healthy business, whose 250 customers included the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Devonshire.

Interestingly, it is made clear through the partnership agreement of 1760 that the business was about retailing rather than manufacturing--a significant distinction, and one that clearly reflects the state of the trade and the wide network of subcontractors and subsidiary workshops that actually supplied the goods for sale. A major part of the book then goes on to explore these complex relationships in prodigious detail, looking at specialisation and manufacture, workshop structure and practice, labour and raw material costs, the craftsmen involved, their business and familial links, the last being characteristic of the trade, like others of the period. Aldridge and Woodnorth, for example, supplied Parker and Wakelin with over 3,000 troy ounce of silver from their George Street premises in 1766, for which there was a 1,950 [pounds sterling] labour charge. In the April of that year, they delivered a 'small knurled inkstand, a large dolphin trowel, a set of vases, a set of chased canisters, three escallop shells and three dish crosses'. The ledgers deliver thousands of examples of such minutiae, that, when distilled into the pages of this book, give an unparalleled vista of the goldsmiths' world.

From the goldsmiths, the spotlight moves to the patrons, where the ledgers reveal not simply a roll-call of the major aristocratic names of the day but also a more egalitarian mix of customers. Philippa Glanville and others have pointed out that silver ownership was widespread by this period, with silver spoons and similar small objects appearing in all but the poorest households.

However, the 'great customers' were most sought after, not surprisingly, since it was they who placed the orders for substantial quantities of plate. They also partly dictated design, a process that the book examines in some depth. Again, the documentary sources reveal the subtleties of peer pressure, the changing demands of fashion, and how the taste of the most sophisticated customers filtered down into the order books. Lord Harcourt, for example, while on ambassadorial duty in Paris in the 1760s, bought highly fashionable neo-classical silver from Robert-Joseph Auguste, the pre-eminent goldsmith of his day, then had it copied on his return by Parker and Wakelin. Thereafter, 'fine festoon candlesticks' make fairly regular appearances, supplied to other clients, so disseminating a refined French style through the repertoire.

Copying existing silver and extending services was a considerable part of the business, but so too were the more mundane activities of 'boyling and burnishing'--the ongoing repair, maintenance and updating that was a key element of the client relationship.