English silver baskets

Magazine Antiques, June, 2000 by Peter Kaellgren

Original invoices and prices for individual and occasionally pairs of silver baskets have been published, [9] but it is difficult to equate them fairly with the cost of other silver vessels of their period. Evidence of their relative value comes from an unexpected source-the secondhand and appraisal business. Quite by chance I found in the British Library in London The Plate-GlassBook consisting of[ldots]authentic tables[ldots]By a Glass-House Clerk; to which is added the Compleat Appraiser: consisting of eighteen tables, and instructions for the valuing of[ldots]furniture, &c. (London, 1757). The library has editions of the book through 1784. It includes tables for valuing various dlmensions and qualities of mirror glass, which was difficult to make and polish. There are also helpful diagrams for salvaging smaller plates of a useful size from a large broken one. In addition, there are instructions on how to appraise lead, which was used extensively for roofs, cisterns, and downspouts, and how to evaluate silver.

In the silver section [10] common items like teaspoons and sugar tongs are valued at 5s. 4d. per ounce for "old Sterling" versus 5s. 6d. per ounce for "new Sterling." Old sterling presumably refers to older and possibly worn silver in obsolete styles, and new sterling to fashionable objects of recent manufacture and in good condition. Waiters, salvers, teakettles (with or without lamps), and chocolate- and coffeepots are valued at 6s. and 6s, 2d. per ounce in the same categories. Tureens are 6s. 6d. and 6s. 8d. per ounce in the two categories. The most highly valued objects are "Bread Baskets," which are respectively 7s. per ounce and 7s. 2d. per ounce. As is evident, the secondhand and appraisal market can sometimes provide the most interesting insights into how objects were valued in their time.

By the late 1750s a wide range of silver baskets were being produced in London, many of a quality designed to satisfy less affluent customers than the baskets shown in Plates II, IIa, III, IIIa, and VI. Samuel Herbert and Company specialized in baskets of all sizes. One of the firm's toy baskets, donated to the museum by Margaret Gouinlock, is shown in Plate V. Two typical small baskets from the Robertson gift (see Pl. IV), each weighing four troy ounces, are made of thin silver. The pierced motifs were mechanically cut with a steel punch and the embossed decoration on the borders stamped out with steel dies. The scholars G. Bernard Hughes and Michael Clayton both describe the panels as being pierced with the help of a small fly press and then joined with wirework ribbons. [11] Both baskets have feet trimmed with twisted wire, a cheaper way of strengthening projecting edges than cast ornament. Baskets of this size were typically used for serving sweetmeats.

Wirework and filigree were always part of the repertoire of English silversmiths, although such work has not survived in as good condition as more substantial objects. The Robertson gift includes a wirework basket of the type introduced in the 1760s with a thin sheet-silver base (Pl. IX). Despite its rather insubstantial construction, the basket weighs thirty troy ounces and presages the simple elegance of the neoclassical style.