Old Sheffield Plate
On the 17th 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 18th
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