The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Silversmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Silversmith in Eighteenth-Century WilliamsburgThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Silversmith in Eighteenth-Century WilliamsburgAuthor: Thomas K. FordContributor: Thomas K. BullockRelease date: October 10, 2018 [eBook #58066]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILVERSMITH IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WILLIAMSBURG ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Silversmith in Eighteenth-Century WilliamsburgAuthor: Thomas K. FordContributor: Thomas K. BullockRelease date: October 10, 2018 [eBook #58066]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Title: The Silversmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

Author: Thomas K. FordContributor: Thomas K. Bullock

Author: Thomas K. Ford

Contributor: Thomas K. Bullock

Release date: October 10, 2018 [eBook #58066]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILVERSMITH IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WILLIAMSBURG ***

THESILVERSMITHin Eighteenth-CenturyWILLIAMSBURGAn Account of his Life & Times, & of his CraftWilliamsburg Craft SeriesWILLIAMSBURGPublished byColonial WilliamsburgMCMLXXX

An Account of his Life & Times, & of his Craft

Williamsburg Craft Series

WILLIAMSBURGPublished byColonial WilliamsburgMCMLXXX

Decorative capital

Through many years before the Revolution and for a time early in the war, James Craig and James Geddy the younger were probably Williamsburg’s foremost craftsmen in the jewelry, watch repairing, and silversmithing way. Geddy’s shop stood on Duke of Gloucester Street “next door below the Church,” Craig’s Golden Ball still farther down.

At one time Craig advertised in theVirginia Gazettethat he had “Just imported from London—A choice Assortment of Jewellery, Plate, Toys and fine Cuttlery. There are some fine visual Spectacles fit for all ages.” Not long afterward in the same paper Geddy listed in some detail “A NEATAssortment ofPLATE, WATCHES, AND JEWELLERY,” and emphasized that “the Reasonableness of the above Goods, he hopes, will remove that Objection of his Shop’s being too high up Town ... and the Walk may be thought rather an Amusement than a Fatigue.” A much more typical notice was that of Patrick Beech reproduced on the following page. It bears little resemblance to a modern newspaper advertisement, but it is so characteristic of its own time that any one of Williamsburg’s several pre-Revolutionary silversmiths might have penned it.

Fifteen men, possibly sixteen, followed the silversmith’s craft in Williamsburg between 1699 and 1780, while this small city was the capital of the Virginia colony. Through the years, most of them took advantage of the newspapersto announce the location of their shops, the arrival of shipments of goods from London, and the kinds of articles and services they had to offer.

All of them combined with silversmithing some other craft, most often that of jeweler or watch repairer. Time and again they assured prospective purchasers that their wares, whether country made or imported, were in the very latest fashion. Each one without exception offered the “highest” price for old gold and silver, including gold lace, either in cash or to be credited against new work. And very often they felt it necessary to specify that sales would be “for ready money only.”

Advertisement appearing in Purdie and Dixon’s VIRGINIA GAZETTE on October 6, 1774.

PATRICK BEECH,At theBRICK SHOP,opposite Mr.Turner’sstore,WILLIAMSBURG,BEGS leave to inform the public that he makes and sells all sorts of GOLD, SILVER and JEWELLERY WORK, after the newest fashions, and at the lowest prices, for ready money only. Those who are pleased to favour him with their commands may depend upon having their work done in the neatest manner, and on the shortest notice; and their favours will be most gratefully acknowledged.... He gives the highest prices for old GOLD, SILVER, or LACE, either in cash, or exchange.... Commissions from the country will be carefully observed, and punctually answered.

PATRICK BEECH,At theBRICK SHOP,opposite Mr.Turner’sstore,WILLIAMSBURG,

BEGS leave to inform the public that he makes and sells all sorts of GOLD, SILVER and JEWELLERY WORK, after the newest fashions, and at the lowest prices, for ready money only. Those who are pleased to favour him with their commands may depend upon having their work done in the neatest manner, and on the shortest notice; and their favours will be most gratefully acknowledged.... He gives the highest prices for old GOLD, SILVER, or LACE, either in cash, or exchange.... Commissions from the country will be carefully observed, and punctually answered.

Interestingly, it was a Williamsburg silversmith of a generation earlier who established a high water mark of colonial newspaper advertising. After a preliminary notice, theVirginia Gazetteappeared on August 19, 1737, with its entire back page occupied by the announcement of a lottery to be held by Alexander Kerr, jeweler and silversmith of Williamsburg. As if this extravagance on the part of a Scotsman like Kerr was not startling enough, the same full-page notice appeared again two weeks later.

A typical London goldsmith’s trade card or shop bill. This one is reproduced fromThe London Goldsmiths, 1200-1800: A Record of the Names and Addresses of the Craftsmen, their Shop-Signs and Trade Cards, by Sir Ambrose Heal. As one may note, a great deal of work and imagination went into the preparation of Heming’s trade card. William Hogarth, the eminent English artist who served six years as apprentice to a London silversmith, is known to have engraved two or three goldsmith’s trade cards of simpler design.

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSEDIEU ET MON DROITThomas HemingGOLDSMITH to his MAJESTYat the King’s Arms in Bond StreetFACING CLIFFORD STREETMakes and Sells all sorts of Gold &Silver Plate in the highest Tastes.Likewise all sorts of Jewellers work, Watches,Seals in Stone, Steel & Silver, Engrav’d.Mourning Rings, &c. &c. &c. and at the mostReasonable Prices.NB. Gives most Money for the above Articlesor Lace burnt or unburnt, &c.

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSEDIEU ET MON DROIT

Thomas HemingGOLDSMITH to his MAJESTY

at the King’s Arms in Bond StreetFACING CLIFFORD STREET

Makes and Sells all sorts of Gold &Silver Plate in the highest Tastes.Likewise all sorts of Jewellers work, Watches,Seals in Stone, Steel & Silver, Engrav’d.Mourning Rings, &c. &c. &c. and at the mostReasonable Prices.

NB. Gives most Money for the above Articlesor Lace burnt or unburnt, &c.

Kerr proposed to sell 400 tickets at one pistole each and give 80 prizes worth, at “common saleable Prices,” a total of 400 pistoles. (A pistole was the old quarter-doubloon of Spain, or a similar gold coin, worth about four dollars.) The top prize in the lottery, a combination of a diamond ring, an amethyst pin, a heavily jeweled pendant, and an ornamented gold box, was to be worth 62 pistoles; the other prizes ranged down to 40 valued at two pistoles each. The list included rings, earrings, snuff boxes, toothpick cases, spoons, tongs, gold buttons, buckles, and boxes of various sorts.

After two postponements, probably in order to sell every last ticket, the drawing took place “at the Capitol.” This doubtless meant on the steps or portico or in the yard, rather than within the building itself. The outcome was recorded in a single sentence in theGazette: “Yesterday Mr. Kerr’s lottery of Jewels and Plate was drawn; and the highest Prize came up in Favour of Mrs. Dawson.”

Kerr’s long list of prizes—and the items listed for sale in advertisements of other eighteenth-century Williamsburg silversmiths—reveal that the articles these smiths made in their shops, like the ones they imported, were of great variety but mostly of small size. Besides the silver buckles, sugar tongs, teaspoons, toothpick cases, and snuff boxes of the lottery list, other silversmiths advertised thimbles, soup and punch ladles, salt casters or shakers, watch chains, cream buckets or “piggins,” and plated as well as solid silver spurs. Among these, the soup ladles were the largest items.

If Williamsburg smiths made larger items on special order as they may have, no such pieces have survived, nor has any mention of them been found in shop records. Custom-made articles would not have been advertised, of course.

Patrick Beech, as his advertisement suggested, was obviously a jeweler as well as a Silversmith. James Craig of the Golden Ball, who made a pair of earrings for Washington’sbeloved stepdaughter, Patsy Custis, was primarily a jeweler rather than a Silversmith. James Geddy, Jr., combined the cleaning and repairing of watches and clocks with silver- and goldsmithing. John and William Rowsay, brothers and partners in a Williamsburg shop, sold not only plate and precious stones, but a wide assortment of general merchandise, to wit:

Advertisement appearing in Dixon and Nicholson’s VIRGINIA GAZETTE on October 16, 1779.

Just imported and to be sold by the subscribers inWilliamsburg,A NEAT assortment of cutlery, pinchbeck shoe and stock buckles, plated do. watch chains seals and keys, paper snuff-boxes, playing cards, pins and needles, ivory combs, linen, muslins, cap lace, corded dimity, ginghams, calicoes, silk and thread flockings, bohea tea,&c.Also a few hogsheads of good RUM, by the hogshead or quarter cask. (1)JOHN & WILLIAM ROWSAY.

Just imported and to be sold by the subscribers inWilliamsburg,

A NEAT assortment of cutlery, pinchbeck shoe and stock buckles, plated do. watch chains seals and keys, paper snuff-boxes, playing cards, pins and needles, ivory combs, linen, muslins, cap lace, corded dimity, ginghams, calicoes, silk and thread flockings, bohea tea,&c.Also a few hogsheads of good RUM, by the hogshead or quarter cask. (1)JOHN & WILLIAM ROWSAY.

This versatility of crafts was almost universal among colonial silversmiths, especially in the southern colonies. Not one of the Williamsburg smiths limited himself rigidly to the making and selling of silver and gold articles. Any who tried would probably not have enjoyed a large income in this essentially small town in an essentially rural colony.

Even so, no Williamsburg silver worker was half so versatile as the most famous silversmith of them all—a Bostonian by the name of Paul Revere. Besides being a horseman of considerable note, Revere was an accomplished designer and worker in silver, and a skilled engraver on silver and copper. He drew and engraved political cartoons that helped stimulate the Revolution, then engraved and printed the first issues of Continental paper money to help finance it. As the owner and operator of a copper foundry, he cast church bells and Revolutionary cannon. He manufactured gunpowder for a while, too, and made and installed dental devices that he advertised as being not only ornamental but also “of real Use In Speaking and Eating.”

Several other colonial silversmiths also doubled in dentistry, a fairly normal coupling of crafts since both demandskill in working silver and gold. This tendency, however, was deplored by the “real” dentists of the day, those who might or might not have had a touch of the slender medical training then available. But the displeasure of these practitioners was certainly no greater than that displayed by the trained silversmiths whenever a blacksmith tried to edge into their own craft.

On the other hand, there was not the least jealousy between silversmiths and goldsmiths—for these are but two different names for the same craft. All silversmiths are equally goldsmiths, and vice versa. But long-standing custom and the prestige attached to the more precious of the two metals often moved men who worked almost entirely in silver to proclaim themselves publicly as “goldsmiths.”

James Craig advertised as a jeweler during his first two decades in Williamsburg. Then when he branched into silver work he asked to be addressed as “Goldsmith in Williamsburg,” and named his shop the “Golden Ball.” James Geddy, Jr., customarily advertised as a “goldsmith,” but this conceit seems not to have impressed the legal profession in Williamsburg. Deeds and documents drawn up by more prosaic hands refer to him twice as “silversmith” and once as “jeweler.”

By combining several vocations, some if not all of the Williamsburg silversmiths seem to have made at least a respectable living. In addition to those whose names have already appeared in this account, three others deserve mention.

John Brodnax was the first to follow the craft in Williamsburg. The son of a London goldsmith, he originally settled in Henrico County near what is now Richmond. The date of his arrival is unknown, but about 1694 he moved to a forest crossroads seven miles from Jamestown called Middle Plantation. Five years later this became the colony’s capital “city” and was renamed Williamsburg. In 1711 Brodnax was appointed “Keeper of the Capitol and publick Gaol” at a salary of £30 a year, later raised to £40.

Frontispiece ofA New Touchstone for Gold and Silver Waresby W. B., published in London in 1679. By William Badcock, a London goldsmith, it was the standard seventeenth-century reference book on metalwork. The forge, bellows, and tools are typical of those of the craft, of which St. Dunstan was the patron saint.

Brodnax died in 1719 leaving an estate of £1,000, a very considerable amount in those days, including nearly £200 worth of old gold and silver and close to £300 of finished work. Whether he acquired this estate through silversmithing alone cannot be determined now. It seems highly unlikely in view of the limited economy of that time and place and the experience of others in the craft at a later and more opulent period. He may well have gained his wealth by inheritance, by the sale of his backcountry lands to William Byrd in 1711, or possibly, as so many others did, from the sale of tobacco produced on those acres.

Anthony Singleton was born in Williamsburg in 1750, possibly served as apprentice to James Craig, and opened his own jewelry and goldsmith shop in 1771 opposite the Raleigh Tavern. Little is known today about Singleton’s career as a craftsman in silver. After making his mark as a captain of artillery in the Revolution, he moved to Richmond and married Lucy Harrison Randolph, daughter of Benjamin Harrison the Signer, sister of William Henry Harrison the President, and widow of Peyton Randolph of Wilton.

Although Singleton held a number of public and private offices of trust and responsibility, and by virtue of his marriage had gained membership in Virginia’s aristocracy, he most solemnly enjoined in his will that his sons “be brought up to some mechanical profession.”

William Waddill announced in 1767 his intention to open shop “next door below the Old Printing Office” in Williamsburg. He called himself a “Goldsmith and Engraver” and offered to buy up old gold and silver and rework it “in any taste the owner chooses.”

Whether he did open a business as intended is not known, but a few years later he was a jeweler and engraver—and perhaps a partner—in the shop of James Geddy, Jr. Since Geddy married Elizabeth Waddill and named one of his sons William Waddill Geddy, the two men were presumably brothers-in-law. Waddill followed Geddy by a fewyears in leaving Williamsburg to find greener pastures in the growing cities of Richmond and Petersburg.

William Waddill’s known work illustrates how very slight is the amount of surviving silver that can be ascribed with any certainty to Williamsburg smiths. He engraved plates for the printing of paper currency in Virginia, and he made a silver nameplate and handles for the coffin of Governor Botetourt, whose remains lie buried beneath the chapel floor at the College of William and Mary. The coffin plate, purloined by Union soldiers during the Civil War, has since been returned to the college, which has loaned it to Colonial Williamsburg for display at the restored house and shop of James Geddy.

Also on display there are several articles of silver that can now be attributed to the hand of Geddy himself. One is a small saucepan or pot-like cup, with a straight silver handle added at a later time; the others are spoons. The saucepan and three of the spoons bear the “I·G” maker’s mark of James Geddy, Jr., the “I” being the eighteenth-century equivalent of “J,” at least in certain situations.

The saucepan is believed to have once been the property of Colonel William Preston, a burgess from Augusta County for a time before the Revolution. Preston is known to have purchased other articles from Geddy, and this particular piece of hollowware has come down through his descendants. One of the teaspoons marked “I·G” was found as long ago as 1930 at the site of the Palace kitchen, but its attribution to Geddy remained uncertain for nearly forty years. Then, in 1968, five more silver spoons were unearthed in the yard behind Geddy’s house, two of them having the identical maker’s mark. Another of the excavated group, a tablespoon, lacks any mark to show the maker, butdoes have the initials IGE engraved on the handle, almost certainly those of James Geddy and his wife Elizabeth.

The teaspoon found at the Palace site is also engraved on the handle in the same fashion but with the initials CAA. Christopher Ayscough was gardener at the Palace in the time of Governor Fauquier; his wife, Anne, was the governor’s housekeeper. Fauquier thought so highly of Mrs. Ayscough’s stewardship that he bequeathed her £250 sterling, a very generous sum. Possibly the silver teaspoon found beneath the brick floor of Anne Ayscough’s kitchen was also a gift from the governor to her and her husband. How it got under the floor can only be guessed at.

St. Paul’s Church in Edenton, North Carolina, possesses a silver chalice and paten bearing the inscription: “The Gift of Colonell Edward Mosely for the use [of] the Church in Edenton in the Year 1725.” They show the initials AK and are of American make. George Barton Cutten, author ofThe Silversmiths of Virginia, does not hesitate, therefore, in ascribing them to Alexander Kerr of Williamsburg.

Two theories are at hand to explain why these and a few other articles are the only ones still in existence that can be attributed to Williamsburg craftsmen. One is that marauding Union soldiers carried away in their knapsacks all the Williamsburg silver they could lay hands on. This theory is most often advanced south of the Mason and Dixon Line and has some truth in it, to be sure. But not the entire truth, apparently. Cutten declares that there is little silver of southern origin in the northern states today—less than might be expected had there been no Civil War.

The other and probably more reasonable explanation is that Williamsburg silversmiths fashioned few pieces of plate of any great size. Silver work in Williamsburg, it appears, was limited mainly to the manufacture of small articles and to the repair of items large and small.

This is a shop where smaller pieces were made. We would refer to it as a jewelry shop. The workmen are shown melting the metal, hammering on an anvil, soldering with a mouth blow pipe, and setting the stones.DIDEROT.

This is a shop of a silversmith who made large pieces such as tea sets, trays, and tankards. A workman can be seen pouring the molten silver into the mold. The two men in front of the forge are hammering the cast ingot into a sheet and the three seated workmen are flattening out the forged sheet and hammering it into various shapes.DIDEROT.

Everything we know of the time and the people reinforces the belief that the planters of Virginia—the only ones who could afford large outlays in silver—bought their plate in London rather than having it made by smiths of the colony. To the older generation of planters England was “home.” They were bound to the mother country by ties of sentiment and culture. Their church was the Church of England, their books and songs were English books and songs, and English-made goods were to them obviously better than the country-made variety.

So strong was this preference for wares imported from London that it persisted through the various nonimportation associations and buy-American movements. In Williamsburg, curiously enough, the leading silversmiths seem to have been less enthusiastic “associators” than were tradesmen elsewhere—certainly less enthusiastic than such leaders of the planter group as George Washington.

Washington, whose preference for British goods was as strong as anyone’s, nevertheless sponsored the nonimportation agreement adopted at the Raleigh Tavern in May 1769. James Geddy, Jr., in a newspaper advertisement of that September, declared that he had

now on hand a neat assortment of country madeGOLDandSILVER WORK, which he will sell at the lowest rates for cash, or exchange for old gold or silver. As he has not imported any jewellery this season, he flatters himself he will meet with encouragement, especially from those Ladies and Gentlemen who are friends to the association.

Geddy, however, did not subscribe himself as a member of the Association until July of 1770, and only three months later he ventured to advertise, along with country-made wares, “a small, but neat assortment, of importedJEWELLERY(ordered before the association took place).”

The boycotting of British goods, however, was a political technique adopted for a particular purpose—to put pressure on Parliament to repeal the Townshend duties or other offensive legislation. When that purpose was accomplished, or seemed certain to be, the old preferences for importedgoods reasserted themselves. Thus we find Washington in August 1770 ordering from London a quantity of expensive clothing and some jewelry “if the Act of Parliament Imposing a Duty upon Tea, Paper, &ca, for the purpose of raising a Revenue in America shoud [sic] be Totally repeald before the above goods are shipped.” And by the next spring Geddy was again advertising goods just imported from London.

Throughout the colonial period it was generally more convenient for Virginia planters to acquire high quality goods in London than in Virginia. This was a consequence of the narrowly channeled two-way trade between the great plantations of the Chesapeake Bay and the great commission-merchant warehouses along the Thames. The planters grew and exported enormous quantities of tobacco, almost all of it sent to London and sold there. Against the proceeds they ordered whatever they needed and wanted of manufactured necessities and luxuries: textiles, clothing, furniture, hardware, ceramics, glass, and silver.

To the planter aristocrats, silver plate (not to be confused with plated silverware) performed three functions at once. It was a form of stable investment, easily watched over, easily identified in case of theft, and easily converted into cash if needed. In the absence of safe-deposit boxes or bank vaults, silver in daily use was as safe a form of “savings” as the times offered. Secondly, plate was a form of social ostentation in which all members of the group indulged to a greater or lesser degree. Finally, plate was useful in the proper serving of the owners and their guests; a well-to-do planter would have thought it impossible to get along without quantities of food and drink on his table, and almost as unthinkable not to have some silver articles on the table, too.

Although only the wealthy families possessed an occasional large and elaborate silver piece of London manufacture—such as epergnes and monteiths—many Virginians not of the planter aristocracy did own silver. AlexanderPurdie, for example, one proprietor of theVirginia Gazette, owned real estate, nine slaves, and 130 ounces of plate when he died. Other professional men and even artisans in colonial Virginia also owned silver in amounts that seem large in contrast to what their modern counterparts generally possess.

One other circumstance that helps explain the dearth of silver articles made in Williamsburg was the scarcity of raw material. There simply was not very much silver or gold in Virginia for colonial craftsmen to work with. Despite the great hopes of the early Jamestown settlers—hopes that in Captain John Smith’s day nearly cost the settlement its life—no silver has ever been mined in Virginia, and precious little gold. For his raw material, the colonial Virginia silversmith thus had to depend on imports.

Precious metal might come into the silversmith’s hands in any of three forms. One was bullion, bars of the virgin metal fresh from the mines and refineries of Mexico or Peru. Another was in the form of minted coins of various countries. The third consisted of silver or gold articles already wrought, but available for one reason or another to be melted down and reworked.

Perhaps in the seventeenth century a certain amount of bullion reached the English colonies from the Spanish Main in pirate ships. But there is no reason to suppose that this flow continued in the eighteenth century—and certainly not into Virginia. Governor Spotswood’s expedition in 1718 had returned with Blackbeard’s head swinging from a bowsprit and his followers in irons, most of them to be hanged afterward at Williamsburg.

Of course, pirates would as soon have coin as bullion, and pirate ships sometimes found haven in colonial ports, especially in those where no official inquired how poor sailor men suddenly acquired such great wealth. Some said that the colonial officials of North Carolina, New England, New York, and even Pennsylvania could be encouraged to look the other way on such occasions. At any rate, a sizableamount of silver coin entered the colonies in this fashion, at least in the seventeenth century.

Little of this lucre came directly into Virginia, but for other reasons than the attitude of the governors. The rural colonies of the South could offer neither the concealing refuge of large cities nor the lusty recreation that such cities in the middle and northern colonies promised to pleasure-hungry sailors.

In the eighteenth century, however, some coins from France, Spain, Portugal, Arabia, Mexico, and Peru did arrive and circulate in Virginia—pieces of eight, doubloons, pistoles, pistareens, crusadoes, and “dog dollars.” The last, thought to be Dutch in origin, were so called from the crude representation of a lion on one face. Curiously, there were few British crowns, half-crowns, or shillings.

Despite this variety, coined money was by no means plentiful in the colonies in the eighteenth century. The scarcity of specie, in fact, was one of the strongest colonial arguments against the stamp tax in 1765. Nevertheless, coins of known weight and fineness provided the colonial silversmith with a fairly reliable source of raw material.

The third possible source—plate to be melted down and reworked—was less certain as to quantity but of trustworthy quality. Customers who wanted articles of silver made in the newest fashion often had to provide the smith with raw material—usually an equal weight of plate in the older style. If the old pieces had been wrought in England the mark either of a lion passant or the seated figure of Britannia attested to the fineness of the metal used.

But this source was of little help to the smiths of Williamsburg. Although Virginia probably contained as much concentrated wealth and as much plate as any other colony, the Virginians who held most of it leaned toward England in heart and pocketbook. If they wanted their silver refashioned, where more logical to have it done than in London—where fashions were made and where the pieces had been wrought in the first place.

No one earned the right to be a master craftsman in silver—or a master of any other craft—in the eighteenth century without serving a long and thorough apprenticeship.

A boy of the working class in England was usually launched on his life’s career by the time he was 14, and sometimes when he was only 10 or 12. The class of society into which he happened to be born and his father’s vocation usually determined the road he would take. The oldest son almost automatically followed the father’s trade and inherited his tools and shop, if he had one.

The same custom prevailed in the English colonies, including Virginia, but in modified form. Here the freedom of movement encouraged by the beckoning frontier of opportunity, and especially of cheap land, broke down many social and economic barriers. A man of one class could more easily climb into the class above or aspire to have his son do so. Even the long-standing apprenticeship system suffered. Not every man who arrived in the colony, or moved to its western reaches and set up shop as a master craftsman, had actually earned the ancient right to employ that title.

But by and large, colonial boys became colonial craftsmen only by completing an arduous apprenticeship period of seven years—more or less. During this time they learned the “art and mysterie” of the craft and gained skill in using its tools. At the age of 21 they became “journeymen” for an additional period until they acquired enough capital to set up in business for themselves.

Unlike the countries of Europe, the colonies in America did not have uniform laws regulating every aspect of the apprenticeship system. Some colonies had no legal regulations at all, some limited the effect of controls to specified trades or to certain aspects of apprenticeship, and some had laws that were honored in the breach more than in the observance. In sum, the colonies generally did not follow the European example of employing the authority of government to insure high standards of training and practice in the trades and crafts.

A work bench which could accommodate five workmen, allowing each to take advantage of daylight. The latticed floor caught filings and bits of metal which were salvaged and subsequently refined.DIDEROT.

The shop of a London clock and watchmaker. The large octangular faced clock hanging on the wall is typical of the kind that would have been found in public places. It was later called the Parliament clock. One may be seen at the Golden Ball.UNIVERSAL MAGAZINE.

The traditions of apprenticeship, however, survived the ocean crossing somewhat better than the legal sanctions. Law or no law, the required seven-year minimum for apprenticeship in England was also customary in America. This seems to have been especially true of such highly skilled crafts as silversmithing, although wide variations appeared in the practice of other crafts.

Let’s assume that young John Goodkin of Williamsburg, age 13, must be apprenticed out to learn a trade. Apprenticeship will provide the boy with an assured future livelihood, and at the same time relieve his father of the burden of supporting him. The master craftsman who accepts young Johnny as apprentice will not only teach him the trade but also provide him with board, lodging, clothing, and an occasional shilling (but no wages) for the full period of his apprenticeship. He will also teach Johnny, or see that he learns, a smattering of the three R’s. In return the master will gain the services of—he hopes—a willing and receptive helper for seven years at minimum cost to himself.

The terms of apprenticeship were sufficiently standardized and frequently enough resorted to that printed forms were customarily used, with blank spaces for names and dates to be inserted. One copied by hand in the York County Deed book of 1762 reads as follows:

“This Indenture Witnesseth that John Webb an Orphan hath put himself ... apprentice to William Phillips of Williamsburg Bricklayer to learn his Art, Trade and Mystery; and ... to serve the said William Phillips from the day of the date hereof for ... five Years next ensuing during all which Term, the said Apprentice, his said Master faithfully shall serve, his Secrets keep, his lawful commands at all Times readily obey; He shall do no damage to his said Master, nor see it to be done by others, without giving Notice thereof to his said Master. He shall not waste hissaid Master’s Goods nor lend them unlawfully to any. He shall not committ Fornication, nor contract Matrimony within the said Term. At Cards, Dice or any other unlawful Game he shall not play whereby his said Master may have damage. With his own Goods, nor the Goods of others without Licence from his Master, he shall not buy nor sell. He shall not absent himself day or night from his said Master’s Service, without his Leave, nor haunt Alehouses, Taverns, or Play Houses, but in all Things behave himself as a faithful Apprentice ought to do during the said Term. And the said Master shall use the utmost of his Endeavours to teach, or cause to be taught or instructed the said Apprentice in the Trade or Mystery of a Bricklayer and procure or provide for him sufficient Meat Drink; Cloaths, Washing and Lodging fitting for an Apprentice....”

Johnny Goodkin of Williamsburg may himself want to be an explorer and trapper in Virginia’s endless western territories. Or, like young Ben Franklin, he may want to go to sea. But it is his father who makes the decision. And more often than not the father’s own decision is made for him by whatever openings for apprentices exist at the moment.

In Johnny’s case the decision is easily reached: Mrs. Goodkin’s cousin is a silversmith in Williamsburg and agrees to accept the boy as apprentice. Thus Johnny can look forward to a thoroughly respectable career. He may never rise to the social heights attained by Anthony Singleton; in fact he is unlikely to. But he may make himself so well respected by his fellow citizens as to be chosen by them a member of the city’s Common Council. That honor was bestowed on James Geddy, Jr., in 1767.

As an apprentice to a silversmith, what will Johnny do? Probably he will arise very early in the morning and do household chores like any son of the family. One of his duties in the shop will doubtless be to light the fire in the forge. If necessary he will replenish the supply of charcoal, perhaps by fetching a sack from a bakery. The baker produces charcoal as an incidental by-product in the course of heating his ovens.

Above are a forge and various tools, such as a mold, bellows, and soldering lamp, which would have been found in an eighteenth-century silversmith’s shop.DIDEROT.

In addition, the young apprentice serves as errand boy, delivering finished goods, collecting bills, and carrying supplies. He also brings cakes and ale for the daily interlude that corresponded to the coffee break of today.

From the founding of Jamestown to the time of the Revolution some 300 silversmiths practiced in the three cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia alone. Another 200 worked in the smaller centers of New England and the middle colonies and in such southern places as Charleston, Annapolis, and Williamsburg. Unfortunately, if any of these 500 colonial silversmiths left a written account of his shop practices and methods of work, it has not been found.

Accordingly, our knowledge of the ways in which colonial smiths worked is derived from other sources. Most of it comes from a few technical handbooks and illustrated encyclopedias published in Europe at about the same time. Inasmuch as many colonial silversmiths gained their knowledge of the craft and of its standards of good practice as apprentices in the old country, it is probable that silversmithing practices in America were similar.

Not identical, though. The environment of the new country altered in some manner or to some degree almost every single attitude, habit, and craft practice. For example, in eighteenth-century England the silversmith whose shop was located within the purview of an assay office could sell the articles he made (with certain exceptions) only after the pieces had been assayed and stamped with the appropriate hallmarks, including one denoting the fineness of the metal. Since the colonies had neither assay offices nor regulations governing the work of silversmiths, each smith was responsible for the quality of his own work.

Because most re-used plate came originally from England and because coins were generally minted at or near sterling fineness (925/1000ths fine, or 92.5% pure silver, the rest of the alloy being copper), most American silversmiths presumably turned out work that was not too far from sterling purity. They could not afford to slip much below that level, after all, since they competed for favor and sales with the much esteemed plate imported from England. In many advertisements in the colonial press, smiths explicitly warranted their work to be of sterling quality. However, among the pieces of early American silver that have actually been assayed in recent years, only a portion have met the test; quite a number have not.

While American smiths no doubt resented the general preference of their customers for articles of English manufacture, they could not overlook the fact that English fashions in design dominated colonial life. Accordingly, silver of colonial make imitated the London styles in plate, being usually some years behind them.

But the American designers were neither unimaginative nor slavish imitators. Their designs modified the English originals rather freely—usually in the direction of simplicity and utility. American silver, dispensing with the heavy ornamentation for ornament’s sake that often characterized the work of London silversmiths, tended to be substantial, serviceable, and vigorous in form, befitting the environment in which it was to be used.

Acquiring a complete set of Silversmith tools, or at least a reasonably adequate set, must have been something of a task in itself. When John Coney, a leading Boston silversmith, died in 1722 at the age of 67, the inventory of his goods reflected his many years at the craft. Among the articles listed were 116 hammers, 127 nests of crucibles, 80 anvils of different shapes and sizes (some called “stakes” and “teasts”), and unnumbered punches; plus chisels, swages, stamps, vises, files, and an almost endless variety of other tools.

Various hand tools used by the silversmith, including a small lathe, vises, clamps, caliper, shears, and pliers.DIDEROT.

John Burt, another Boston silversmith of the eighteenth century, got along with only 40 hammers, 15 pairs of tongs and pliers, 37 “bottom stakes,” 155 punches, and other tools in like sparsity. A glance at the illustration on pages 27 and 28 from Diderot’sEncyclopedia(published in France, 1751-1772) indicates the infinite diversity of anvils that would be needed to produce every possible shape and size of hollow ware.

Even with all these tools—plus forge, ingot molds, drawing bench, binding wire, and many other essentials of the craft—the silversmith was limited to six basic methods of working silver. These were casting, forging, raising, hollowing, seaming, and creasing—the principal methods still employed by hand craftsmen today.

But forging, raising, hollowing, and creasing are all hammering processes, though they differ significantly in the manipulation of the metal under the hammer. In essence, thus, there are only three techniques of forming silver into an article of desired shape: casting the molten metal in a properly shaped mold; hammering an ingot into the shape desired; and building the desired shape from smaller pieces soldered together. Wire produced on the drawing bench might be one of these smaller elements. Filing is considered to be a finishing rather than a forming process.

These forming and working processes, as they would have been used by an eighteenth-century silversmith, will be described in more detail in a moment. But the smith, before he could do any work, had to acquire a supply of refined metal, probably from his customers. He then charged them only for his services in fashioning the new pieces, either a set amount for the type and size of article or a fixed fee per ounce of silver in the finished article.

Early in the Revolution, for example, General George Washington ordered a set of 12 silver “camp cups” from the Philadelphia Silversmith Edmond Milne. He supplied Milne with “16 silvrDolls” to make the cups out of. Possibly these were Portuguese or Brazilian crusadoesor “cross dollars.” As it turned out, there were 1¾ ounces more silver in the 16 dollars than Milne needed for the 12 cups. He retained the excess for his own use and credited its value against his charge for workmanship.

Coins went directly into the smith’s “black lead” or graphite crucible. Old plate had to be broken up first into pieces of suitable size. Then the crucible was set down into—not on—the charcoal fire in the forge. Charcoal on top of the melting silver kept it from absorbing too much oxygen.

Pure silver is a highly ductile and malleable metal with the relatively low melting point of 1761 degrees Fahrenheit. Sterling silver melts at an even lower temperature, so only 15 or 20 minutes in the forge, with constant use of the bellows, would be enough to melt the crucible’s charge. Most impurities in the metal would be sopped up by the porous graphite of the crucible itself. The molten metal was then poured out into a two-piece cast iron ingot mold or into an open mold called a “skillet.” In either case, the cooling metal released any oxygen it might have absorbed in the form of spitting bubbles that left the surface of the ingot pitted with tiny holes.

If the piece of work to be made was a small ornament, it would be cast directly in a sand mold formed by the smith around a pattern of his own making. The acorn-like finials atop teapots or on the covers of tankards were normally made by casting, often a dozen at a time.

Perhaps, however, some customer ordered a simple, straight-sided silver cup, too large to be cast. Our smith could have made it by any one of three methods and the result would be the same in size, shape, weight, and appearance. Generally only another silversmith could hope to tell which was made by which process: forging, raising, or seaming.

Toforgesuch a cup the silversmith would have taken a billet of silver perhaps 3/16 inches thick and from it cut a disk of the same diameter as the lip of the finished cup.Then by careful and repeated hammer blows, using shaped anvils of the proper size and curvature, he would pound the metal into the form he required.

Toraisea cup, the smith would start with silver in the form of a flat sheet as thick (or thin) as he wanted the cup to be. He would have made the sheet himself, of course, by beating an ingot to the required thinness. From the sheet he would cut a disk whose diameter equalled the average diameter plus the average height of the finished cup. By carefully hammering the silver just beyond the edge of the anvil, he would force the metal around the outer part of the disk to rise and “shrink” until the cup was shaped.

To make aseamedcup the smith would again use thin sheet, cutting from it a small round piece for the bottom of the cup and a slightly curved oblong piece to form its side. He would roll the latter into a somewhat cone-shaped cylinder and solder together the edges. Then he would solder the small disk into the lower end of the cylinder so that the cup was formed. This was by far the quickest and easiest method of making hollow ware. The silversmith’s solder is itself composed predominantly of silver.

Whatever method the smith used to form the cup, he would finish it by a process known as planishing. In this procedure the small irregularities in the surface of the piece are carefully hammered smooth by repeated, deft blows of a flat, polished hammer. The face of the planishing anvil is likewise polished to mirror-like smoothness. After planishing would come the filing off of burrs in crevices of the design, and then an all-over polishing with pumice, tripoli, and rouge. At this point the piece would have been ready for surface ornamentation—by engraving, chasing, or repoussé.

Engraving means the cutting of a design into the surface of the work; some metal is removed in the process. Chasing is the impression of a design on the surface by the use of appropriately shaped punches. Repoussé consists of raising a design, somewhat like bas relief, by hammering from the back or inside of the work. In the second and third techniques the metal is displaced but not removed.

Back to Index Next