Silver in England

First Published in 2005. Silver is unique among the decorative arts in that its raw material is both inherently valuable and infinitely reusable. Its ownership has been a social bench-mark and its form has exercised the skills of sculptors, designers, chasers and engravers, but ultimately it could be, and normally was, melted down and refashioned quite without sentiment. Because of this constant recycling, the survival of any individual object is quite random and unrelated to its uniqueness or otherwise in its period. Hitherto plate historians have focused on individual objects almost to the exclusion of the context - social or economic - from which they came but now that context is seen as crucial in understanding historic plate. So in the first section of this book each chapter considers contemporary attitudes and usage. PART I History ONE Medieval TWO Tudor THREE Stuart FOUR Early Georgian FIVE Mid-Georgian to Regency SIX From Victoria to the Present Day PART II Craft, Company and Customers SEVEN 'Touch', Assay and Hallmarking EIGHT Techniques of the Silversmith NINE London, the Country and the Colonies PART III Design and Ornament TEN Heraldry as Ornament ELEVEN Engraving and Engravers TWELVE Alien Craftsmen and Imported Designs PART IV Silver and Society THIRTEEN Antiquaries, Collectors, Fakers FOURTEEN The Sociology of Silver: Gifts and Obligations