Trends in silver collecting
by Jeremy Astfalck
| 18 May, 2004 |
Over the years that I have been trading, there has been the emergence of a new trend in the realm of silver collecting. This trend, the collecting of smaller items of antique silverware, has developed alongside traditional areas of collecting.With our changing lifestyles and the decline of formal entertaining, the reason for this shift is evident and today I will examine the aspects of this trend. By analyzing this I hope to be able to see and perhaps predict where the market for collecting silver is going to go in the next 8 12 years. This hopefully will allow you to collect with confidence and may in time provide a monetary return on a cultural investment. What do I mean by smaller items of antique silver? This definition began in terms of pricing in other words the larger the item, the heavier the weight of silver and subsequently the higher the price achieved. Many of these traditional items were originally hand wrought in silver and have been collected in the last 20 years in order to use in our everyday lives. The smaller items, by their very nature, had smaller amounts of silver and originally were only priced in terms of silver weight. In the last 10 -15 years the workmanship as the criteria to determine value has overtaken the value of the metal. The areas in which one can collect small items are numerous and I am going to cover a few of the more active areas at present beginning with: (1) Wine related silverware Under this definition we find corkscrews made in silver and dating from 1750 onwards when wine and expensive perfumes were first bottled and sealed with wadding and later corks, which needed opening. Silversmiths such as Samuel Pemberton excelled at creating corkscrews out of mother of pearl and silver, which today are more like works of art than humble bottle stopper removers. Wine labels or bottle tickets, which allowed one to distinguish the contents of one decanter from another, display various names ranging from the obvious, such as Port & Whiskey, to the more obscure, such as Current & Malmsey. The makers who produced these items ranged from specialists such as Sandylands Drinkwater an apt name for someone who produced the first decanter labels in 1730, to none other than Paul Storr, the most famous of 19th century English silversmiths who created superb richly cast labels of the finest quality. Next we have: (2) Silver boxes Here one can collect from the earliest produced ones such as counter boxes used to carry gamming counters which were made during the reigns of Queen Anne & George 1 right through to the wonderfully created castle top wares produced from 1830 to 1900. With the advent of widespread travel more people visiting historic monuments created a demand for souvenirs & gifted silversmiths such as Nathaniel Mills, Taylor and Perry and Fredrick Marston created cast & engraved box tops reflecting views of these destinations. One can find images of Windsor castle, Buckingham Palace and Abbotsford House along with pictures of seaside resorts we are still trying to identify today. Half the fun in collecting these is finding scenes that have not been recorded and when entire collections come up for sale these pieces are the ones that create intense interest and high prices. Other boxes one can collect are toothpick boxes, patch boxes and pill boxes. Special mention must also be made of nutmeg graters, produced between 1690 and 1900, which were small boxes with steel grills that were used to store and grate nutmeg. (3) Smoking We stand at what will probably be the end of the smoking era. As this habit passes into history like the widespread habit of taking snuff did 100 years ago, items produced in silver to store cigarettes, light them and present them will be collected in time to come as our grandchildren marvel at our personal habits and strange cultural practices. Indeed today I have for sale a cigarette box given as the invitation to John F Kennedy `s inauguration, which was presented to Juliet Prowse, the well known South African dancer and stage personality, when she was invited to attend and perform along with Frank Sinatra. This together with the cigar box sold late last year, that had belonged to the twentieth centuries most famous cigar smoker, Winston Churchill will become the most interesting pieces to acquire. (4) Caddy spoons This area of collecting has shown huge growth in the last 20 odd years, as these small decorative spoons used for transferring tea from the tea caddy to the tea pot, are easily displayed in smaller homes. Also being linked to a favorite British pastime- that of drinking tea, we have seen prices rise to levels where one could purchase not one but two complete tea services for the same price that you would pay for a novelty caddy spoon by Edward Farrell or Paul Storr. Notwithstanding these high prices the entry level to collecting caddy spoons is reasonable and in the last six months at this fair I have seen Georgian caddy spoons fetch no more than six hundred rand, a mere fifty pounds which must amount to money well spent. A further consideration when collecting is security and with smaller items it would not be difficult to place these under lock and key when you go away on holiday (5) Novelty silver What I mean here is silverware that encompasses unusual designs, examples being pepperettes in the form of owls which would have appealed enormously to the Victorians sense of fun and indicative of their ingenuity. Novelty condiments are a good area to look at as the variety is large and I have presently in stock a mustard pot in the form of a coal scuttle , salt cellars in the form of three legged cooking pots, and a pepperette in the form of an owl. These items transcend normal silver collectables as they are sculptural in form and are very much works of art in their own right. Other novelties can be found across all areas of silver, and today at my stall I have knife rests in the form of sausage dogs and vesta cases- used for holding matches in the form of a ladies boot and a heart shaped example. (6) Boudoir silver Pieces created originally to assist in personal grooming. Items such as perfume bottles which were created not only as storage containers to hold exotic scents but also to pleasure our other senses such as touch and sight. One only has to hold a hobnail cut glass, silver topped perfume bottle to understand this. Other collectables we would find here include traveling clocks, button hooks, glove stretchers and eyebrow brushes. Today a lot of these make great conversation pieces for coffee tables, and it can be amusing to see friends reactions when they find out that what they are holding was used by a breastfeeding mother in Georgian times to protect her self, commonly known as a silver nipple shield. (7) Provincial silver Under this heading I am going to look at Irish and Scottish provincial as well as colonial silver. The defining factor here is supply, and to put it into perspective for every one hundred and fifty pieces made in a major center like London back in the early eighteen hundreds, one piece was made in Dublin. For every ten pieces made in Dublin one piece would be made in Cork and for every twenty pieces made in Cork only one piece would be made in Limerick. Therefore from this it is easy to see why collectors have to pay up to fifteen thousand rand for a single tea spoon made in Limerick. This market driven by collectors focuses not only on the item but also on the marks themselves. Like treasure hunters, collectors will travel far and wide in search of that elusive maker so that over time they not only have a physical record of the marks , but may uncover new makers marks. It is said that only about half the actual pieces bearing marks made by silversmiths who were recorded as working in Ireland have been found, so the scope for collectors is large. Scottish provincial silver, especially from towns in the highlands, is rare as some of them had no more than half a dozen active silversmiths over a hundred year period. A lot of these makers stamped their wares with their initials alongside the abbreviated name of the town or in some cases used the town mark. Examples being Robert Naughton of Inverness who used RN, INS, and a thistle. Another aspect of these marks is that there is considerable variation in the way these were stamped, according to the type of article being marked. On smaller items there may be only one mark , the makers initials, while on more important pieces more marks will be found and it is a common occurrence to see some of these repeated . Colonial silver made in India , Australia and the Cape is also marked in a similar fashion. Cape silver produced in the Cape Province between 1750 and 1880, by no more than seventy silver smiths whose marks are known to us, is particularly rare and most examples reside in museums. Cape silver was of the same standard as English silver, in other words 925 sterling. The styles were the same as that of English, French and Dutch silver. The system of hallmarking was not regulated, and we find many British pseudo hallmarks being used. These marks which copied the English ones of the day even included the Georgian head and to the untrained eye look like genuine English hallmarks. They were not meant to defraud, but rather reassure the largely English clientele residing in the Cape at that time, that what they were buying was solid silver. For collectors armed with copies of these marks, over time it is possible to build a collection representing the majority of these makers. For modern day collectors there are numerous books detailing the various items that I have spoken about, and for those of you who collect, it is worthwhile researching them further. Programs such as The Antiques Road Show filmed in the United Kingdom, will provide much theoretical background in your chosen area. This together with practical experience in handling these items at Antique fairs, as well as talking to specialist dealers should allow you to spot and capitalize on these trends. |