Old Sheffield Plate

On the 17^th September 1788, The Derby Mercury published the following obituary, "On Thursday se’night died at Whitley Wood, near Sheffield, Mr Thomas Boulsover aged eighty-four. This gentleman was the first inventor of Plated Metal: which like many curious arts was discovered by accident."

The obituary goes on to describe this “accident”.  As in all great discoveries, sometimes myth & legend make a more interesting history than the truth however this is the story.

Around 1750 Thomas was working at his cutlers shop in Sheffield, which was of course the centre of the world for cutlery & flatware at the time, when he was tasked with repairing a knife haft which was composed of silver & copper.

He apparently was struck with the way the two metals had fused together and with the practicality of manufacturing plated articles. He then started making plated snuff boxes & buttons.

It is probably more truthful to believe that he applied the blowpipe heat torch a little more forcefully than needed and the heat needed to melt the silver had also melted the copper.

So, what is Old Sheffield Plate & how is it different from what we call Silver Plate today?

The story with Thomas Boulsover continues with the idea that he discovered that if you take a brick of copper & a sheet of silver that have fused together, run the whole thing through a rolling mill the resultant sheet will expand together, producing a sheet of copper with a covering of silver, it behaved as one material.

Prior to this point the only way to produce a plated article was to make the item and then solder sheets of silver to it, which was so expensive, even with the labour costs at the time that it was totally uneconomic.

Boulsover went on to make a highly successful career out of his plated wares, but did only concentrate on small items such as the boxes & buttons mentioned earlier, in fact by 1869, he found it even more profitable to make saws & other edged tools and leave it to others to develop & capitalise on his invention.

One of the earliest to take up the process was Joseph Hancock another cutler working in the same workshop as Boulsover, in fact it has been said that he rather than Boulsover is the “Father of Silver Plated Manufacture”

One of Joseph Hancock’s earliest pieces is shown here, it is a Saucepan. This one is only plated on one side, in this case the inside, however the plate is of unusual thickness.

There are also spoons & forks that are claimed to be by Hancock, these are made in two parts & soldered together as at the time, plating was only done on one side. He is also known for a great variety of larger items such as Tea-Urns, Coffee Pots, Tankards, Cups & Candlesticks.

Somewhat like Boulsover he also realised that he could be more profitable elsewhere, by the mid-1760s he was the owner of rolling mills, making the plate & leaving it to others to make the finished articles.

Another great innovator at the time was Samuel Roberts, he was apprenticed to Thomas Law and made many improvements to the process & design of items. His partner  George Cadman was the first to put silver wire edges to the items, and the firms also had the idea of rubbing in a silver shield so that armorials could be engraved without cutting through to the copper base. Samuel Roberts was the author of several patents & introduced stamped silver feet, handles & mounts.

He himself wrote a letter to a Sheffield Newspaper in 1843 in which he describes the early years of Old Sheffield Plate manufacture, “By about 1865 it was clear that the trade had become considerable, there were about six houses engaged in it and almost all kinds of goods had then become plated metal which had been made in silver”

Sheffield was fiercely proud of the quality of their wares & were indignant at the “articles of a very inferior quality being manufactured for the foreign market”

They took a stand against the “depravity” of some of the itinerant workmen and determined to raise the status of the quality works until it was as high as any other of the workmen of Sheffield. This was a way of inducing “our bad workmen & the depraved characters to leave us and go seek employment elsewhere”

In Birmingham however was the famous Soho workshop of Matthew Boulton. His father had originally set up as a “toymaker” a term at that time meaning a manufacturer of small items such as buttons & boxes etc. The son took over the Snow Hill site in 1759 on his father’s death and, at the age of thirty two became one of the countries leading manufacturers.

One of the most important of the products to come out of the New Soho works was Sheffield & Silver plate, he in fact became the largest single manufacturer of fused plate in the country and alone amongst the Birmingham makers offered a challenge to the Sheffield Quality pieces.

In 1784 a new duty was applied to silver having the effect of pushing the prices of silver articles up by as much as 25%, meaning a silver teapot, previously costing £7 might now cost £9, silversmiths tried to counter this by reducing the thickness of the metal, you will have noted that late 18^th Century items are usually of a much more light & delicate design than the heavy items of the mid-century.

The imposition of this tax was a boon to the Fused Plate manufacturers and armorials on surviving pieces show that the gentry & even the nobility were not averse to buying Fused Plate over silver at the time in order to save money.

As has been said earlier, the first fused plate items were only covered with silver on one side, the insides of cups etc. often being tinned, I have already noted the spoons & forks being made by joining two half stampings however somewhere between 1763 & 1770 sheets of silver were being fused to both sides of the copper block & so double sided plating was born.

The silver edges introduced by Samuel Roberts & George Cadman hid the raw edges and piercing,

usually done with a saw in silver was effected by a carefully designed stamp which pinched the edges of the cut together, thus hiding the edge.

One of the most prolific items made in fused plate were candlesticks, bearing in mind that candles were pretty much the only source of artificial light available, this is not surprising.

    Circa 1760   Circa 1780          Circa 1790-1800    Telescopic Circa 1820-30

All good things must come to an end however and during the 1830s & 1840s many manufacturers began using “German Silver” now more commonly known as Nickel Silver in preference to copper for the base as it was harder & more durable, it was also a better colour, so that when the silver began to wear, it was a whiter metal beneath rather than the lovely rich copper colour (is my preference showing here ?)

Again it was Samuel Roberts in the forefront, developing a patent where a thin sheet of nickel silver was first fuse to the copper before fusing the silver sheet to that, from about 1845, Nickle silver has been the metal of preference for the base of plated wares.

Also from this time, “electro plating began to make an impact, mostly led by Elkingtons of Birmingham as they could make the same articles at a lesser cost than the fused platers could. Even as late as the Great Exhibition of 1851 however judges were still expressing doubts about the viability of this new process on goods made by Elkington, in fact awarding the prize to TJ & N Creswick for goods, “plated by the old process of uniting metals by heat”

Electroplating is a process where the item is made, using all the traditional methods, stamping, spinning, raising etc. and then immersed in a bath with an electric current running from a bar of the metal that is to form the coating (anode) to the item (connected to the negative terminal becoming the cathode) As the current is turned on the silver solutions in the bath and the anode transfer their material to the cathode, coating the item in silver.

This process is so much cheaper than the fused plate process however the coating is pure silver and therefore softer & less durable, unless treated it will also tarnish much faster. The item can be stripped & replated without too much difficulty, unlike Fused Plate where the coating is Sterling (92.5% pure) silver and if electro-plating repairs are applied to this product the colour match is abysmal.

The end was however in sight, a few firms lingered on for some years but most seemed reluctant to adapt to the new process and it found its true home in Birmingham rather than Sheffield, Brummagem had won.

Some of the makers mentioned herein made punch marks, similar to hallmarks as they were so proud of their production, I reproduce a few here below. Unfortunately, no mark has ever been traced for Thomas Boulsover.

Joseph Hancock

            Samuel Roberts & George Cadman

 

Matthew Boulton  

Elkington & Co