| INDEX | ALL SILVER |
| DESCRIPTION | Exceptionally good set of seven antique English George I solid sterling silver Hanoverian with Rat Tail pattern table spoons with frontal central rib and the original crest engraving verso. I say verso but as you all know spoons were laid bowls down at table during this period so really it should be recto. |
| SILVERSMITH | Henry Clarke I, a specialist flatware (spoons and forks) maker who was apprenticed to William Scarlett.
In 1685 Louis XIV of France had revoked the Edict of Nantes leaving the Huguenot silversmiths the alternative of conforming or emigrating. A considerable number of Huguenot silversmiths arrived in England where a government wedded to the cause of Protestantism was bound to protect them. It was not long before the English silversmiths discovered that the Huguenots were serious rivals and were seeking to have their activities restricted. A very frank petition in 1711 to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths signed by some quite well known London silversmiths, including Henry Clarke, states 'That by the admission of necessitous strangers whose desperate fortunes obliged them to work at miserable rates, the representing members have been forced to bestow much more time and labour in working up their plate than hath been the practice in former times, when prices of workmanship were much greater'. |
| DATE or HALLMARK | 1725 |
| ASSAY OFFICE | London |
| WEIGHT in GRAMS | 459 |
| LENGTH | 8", 201mm |
| SILVER STANDARD | ·925 sterling silver |
| CONDITION | excellent, I have left the patination because some of you like that and they will be easy to polish but impossible to re-patinate. It has been a very long time since I have seen spoons this good and then we consider that they are three hundred years old their condition becomes extraordinary. It will be difficult to find better. I am going to have to say it, the finest examples available to mankind today |
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| SOLD |
| Price £648 |
| item number m8617 |
| Available Silver Hanoverian Spoons |
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