Silver

London silver dealer Wynyard Wilkinson suggests an explanation and chronology for the punches used on silver created by the convict silversmith Joseph Forrester, who worked in Tasmania and later Victoria. In the absence of a formal hallmarking system in Australia, he postulates that some Scottish-trained silversmiths working in Australia and Tasmania adopted theScottish practice, observed both in Scotland and other British colonies, of adding a letter punch to denote the place of origin of silver they wholesaled, in this case a ‘T’ for Tasmania.

A new bank in 1880s Brisbane needed a solid, impressive building and a ‘pleasing and interesting’ event to lay its cornerstone. The Queensland Deposit Bank arranged a formal ceremony, with a silver trowel to symbolically ‘well and truly lay’ the corner stone, under which were placed current newspapers and gold coins. Kevin Lambkin tells the story behind the trowel which was elaborately engraved by an apprentice of Brisbane jeweller, the Goldsmith’s Hall Company. After the ceremony, 600 ‘influential citizens’ enjoyed a ‘cold collation’ at the Columbia Skating Rink.

This article presents new information and some speculation relating to the prominent Sydney colonial silversmith Alexander Dick, whose works are found in many Australian public and private collections.

Four early Australian silver flatware items – two spoons and two forks – engraved with the three initials ‘WEB’ present a challenge warranting research. Whose engraved initials (WEB) are they and when were the items made and engraved? Christine Erratt offers an answer. Four flatware1items with the owners’ initials WEB, held in two private collections (plates 1–6), bear the punch marks of Sydney silversmith Alexander Dick (1799-1843), whose shop operated in Sydney from soon after his arrival in 1824 until 1846. His widow Charlotte closed the business in 1846, with Samuel Lyons auctioning the remaining stockon 20–21 April; on 12 December she married music shop owner Francis Ellard.

The late Professor Kenneth Cavill’s article published in Australiana1 identified about 50 spoons of Australian and British manufacture, marking royal and other occasions, with heraldic motifs, maps of Australia or Tasmania and flora and fauna, made either in factories or in craft workshops. Overlapping almost half the years in Cavill’s survey, this article looks at the last 50 years of silver spoon making in Australia, especially decoration using Australian flora and fauna. Silver commemorative spoons and silver plated (EPNS) spoons are omitted.

When Yvonne Barber first proposed writing an article about William Frederick Ward, your editor’s response was ‘Who?’ Readers will react the same way, yet W F Ward was involved in the engraving, design and manufacture of silverware for 40 years. He designed the arms of the City of Sydney, won the competition for the design of the Commonwealth of Australia’s first ten shilling banknote, was responsible for a silver model of HMB Endeavour gifted to the Royal Navy and was managing director of Regal Plate and later of Regal Silver Plate Co Ltd, a company manufacturing silver plate for cafes, restaurants and the NSW Railway Refreshment Rooms – among other achievements.

Dianne Byrne shares some of the outcomes of her postgraduate research into 19th-century presentation jewellery and metalwork made in Queensland or for Queenslanders, focusing here on a series of racing trophies made in the 1880s for the Tattersall’s Club Cup run at Eagle Farm racecourse. Two of these were made by the previously neglected Sydney silversmith Thomas Matthew Alcock, and designed in an international ‘Etruscan’ style, which contrasts with the familiar vernacular style incorporating overtly Australian motifs such as emus and kangaroos.

Thomas Wright (c.1827–1912) may not be a well-known name today, but in early Geelong his shop was a mainstay. As with many other silversmiths and jewellers, little of his work survives, so his name rarely comes up in publications. The recent discovery of a Thomas Wright silver trowel in the Geelong Grammar School archives changes this; school archivist Geoff Laurenson now provides a fuller record of Wright’s life and career.

Lieutenant James Cook RN, commanding officer of HMB Endeavour, the renamed collier Earl of Pembroke, sailed on 26 August 1768 from England on a naval and scientific voyage to observe the Transit of Venus, collect natural history specimens and explore the east coast of New Holland. The 250th anniversary of the voyage has reignited interest in Cook, with exhibitions and exploration once more of Newport Harbor for the remains of his ship, re-named Lord Sandwich and sunk to blockade the port in 1778 during the American War of Independence. Yvonne Barber looks at a Cook memento which deserves to be better known.

Prominent colonists or officials returning “home” were often presented with a memento to thank them for their achievements in Australia. These gifts often took the form of an object that was distinctly Australian in its design or materials. Many works have been forgotten or destroyed, so it is a gratifying when they are recognised and repatriated to Australia where they will be appreciated and valued as part of our national heritage.

How things are designed and made should interest all those with a passion for the creative arts. One of our members, Christine Erratt, was involved in the process of designing a new mace for the Australian Catholic University because of the important articles she wrote for Australiana, and another member, W.J. Sanders Pty Ltd, was commissioned to make it. Like many pieces of historic Australian art, the design of the mace combines a number of motifs, several representing Australian natural history subjects, to symbolise the University’s origins and campuses.

How do three spoons, two by Sydney silversmith Alexander Dick and a later spoon made in London, come to bear the same crest and initials? Lesley Garrett explores the possibilities.

Jolyon Warwick James traces the story of an Australian colonial silver spoon with a name engraved on the stem, and finds a link with a banker who lived and died at Bronte House overlooking one of Sydney’s famous beaches.

The National Gallery of Australia holds a three-piece silver buckle that originally formed the central element of a Champion’s Boxing Belt presented to prize-fighter Isaac Reid in 1847 (plate 1). This remarkable belt was made by Sydney silversmiths J.J. Cohen & Son1 and engraved by John Carmichael. Until recently significant details relating to the origins and history of the belt had remained obscure. What words were engraved on the main plate when it was first presented? Was there a complete description of the original belt? What became of it after the champion’s untimely death only months after his triumph? How did the belt come into the possession of boxer Larry Foley in 1886?

During the second decade of the new millennium, many pioneers of the crafts movement in Australia, which began to flourish in the 1970s, will celebrate four decades of working in studio practices with their chosen materials.

The practice of presenting diplomatic gifts to dignitaries goes back to antiquity. As the much-admired wife of the governor of the colonies of Queensland, New Zealand and Victoria, Diamantina, Lady Bowen received some significant pieces of jewellery and metalwork. These gifts were frequently, and often fulsomely, described in contemporary newspapers. Dianne Byrne investigates some of her presentation pieces, through newspaper accounts and images.

John Locksley Kemp, a descendant of Richard Kemp, gave a silver medal, passed down through the Kemp family, to the Powerhouse Museum in 1984. Very little was known about the medal’s history until Karen Eaton came across it by chance while viewing the Museum’s on-line collection database. Also a descendant of Richard Kemp, an intrigued Karen set about discovering all she could about Belle Vue Hall school and its headmaster Abel trood. she explores trood’s life in England, America and Australia, reveals student life and activities at the school he established at Belle Vue Hall, and the life and demolition of the building itself.