| INDEX | ALL SILVER |
| DESCRIPTION | Charming and scarce antique English Georgian solid sterling silver swing handled basket with bead edge and bright-cut engraved decoration. Possibly once part of an impressive
Georgian table centrepiece epergne but works equally well as a fully formed standalone basket. Although styled as the very much larger bread baskets of the period, this piece was intended for sweetmeats.
Although an important decorative feature, the primary purpose of these applied bead edges is to add strength. The handle would be weak and bendy without it's bead strip. Similarly the edges of the bowl section could become thin as the silver is worked up. It took great skill to work up enough metal in the correct thickness throughout and so was usually overdone and then cut and filed back. There is a small spot of solder beneath the top rim, about 4mm lengthways (image 9, right side edge, up a bit from the middle). Difficult to split the bowl without also splitting the bead strip and the bead strip is not split, so was the silver worked up too thin and split in manufacture? Probably not as the rim beneath the decoration actually looks a least as thick as the rest and with no indication of a split. I am thinking it is some solder spillage from when the bead strip was applied and for some reason not cleaned up. There a few patches of solder spillage to the upper side too, especially where two lengths of bead strip meet. By 1785 more of the manufacturing was becoming mechanised and these decorative strips were bought in from the man who had just invested in a machine to make the strips. Beneath the base is the maker's mark, the original initial engraving A·G and a small, faint scratch engraving R M Hope and beneath that a slightly bolder 'Mary' in the same hand. The full set of hallmarks is up next to the top rim with the incuse duty mark lightly struck. |
| SILVERSMITH | John Lambe |
| DATE or HALLMARK | 1785 |
| ASSAY OFFICE | London |
| WEIGHT in GRAMS | 108 |
| LENGTH | 6", 153mm |
| SILVER STANDARD | ·925 silver |
| CONDITION | excellent, rocks a little due to lightly bumped base rim, perhaps from falling off the epergne. |
select any image to enlarge
| SOLD |
| Price £333 |
| item number m8817 |
| email questions to silfren@btinternet.com
telephone 07563 011924 experts available 24 hours every day |