26 
House & Garden 
A modern drawer handle of 
beautiful design shows an ef¬ 
fective use of Sheffield plate 
THE STORY OF OLD SHEFFIELD PLATE 
This Ware Which Combines Cheapness With Beauty Affords 
A Practical Subject for The Collector 
A. T. WOLFE 
A pierced sugar 
basin with a floral 
design. Made 
about 1765 
S HEFFIELD plate 
has a unique history. 
It was discovered at 
an opportune moment, by 
an accident, and in the 
unlikeliest spot for such a 
discover)'. 
In 1742 when Boulsover 
hit upon it, Sheffield was 
a small mean place, and 
cutlery of the common¬ 
place and strictly utili¬ 
tarian kind was the chief industry. The in¬ 
habitants were poor folk; they cut their meat 
with the Sheffield whittle, as in Chaucer’s day, 
and ate it out of pewter and treene or wooden 
vessels. Silver table appointments were not 
thought of in Sheffield, much less made, 
though the people of quality were already 
looking out for something more refined than 
pewter and less costly than silver for their 
homes. 
The discovery, by “That ingenious me¬ 
chanic” Thomas Boulsover, of plating by 
fusion is somewhat legendary. The story goes 
that as he was mending a knife made partly 
of copper and partly of silver it became over¬ 
heated and as a result of his carelessness the 
melted silver and copper were inseparably 
fused together. Perceiving that there was 
something in it, he experimented, and presently 
the process was established and the accidental 
eliminated. He then set up a factory and for 
a short time turned out small wares—buttons, 
round snuff-boxes and knife handles. It was 
impossible that Boulsover could have fully 
realized the potential value of his discovery; 
he was a cutler by trade with no knowledge 
Very late Sheffield work devel¬ 
oped a floridity of design. This 
vase is an example 
of hollow ware and its 
many uses: his traveller 
cheated him; there was no 
assay-office nearer than 
London and soon we find 
him returning, for greater 
profit, to his edged tools, 
and but for the enterprise 
of his apprentice, Joseph 
Hancock, the world might 
have been poorer for Shef¬ 
field plate. 
Faithful to the trade of 
the town the new material was first used for 
buttons and boxes, then Hancock astonished 
the natives by a saucepan silver-plated inside, 
and “led the way from a button to a can¬ 
delabra” during the fifteen years that elapsed 
before he, too, gave up the manufacture and 
turned his attention to rolling the metal for 
the plate itself. 
By that time the industry was well estab¬ 
lished; from 1760 it grew apace and spread to 
London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Dub¬ 
lin. By 1773, no less than sixteen firms were 
working in Sheffield alone. Horace Walpole’s 
“quite pretty” set the seal of his approval in 
England, and the markets of Europe were de¬ 
manding more and more. From this time on 
A simple cream 
jug bearing rare 
imitation silver 
marks 
The lion and ring handles 
found on this late Geor¬ 
gian coffee urn were a fa¬ 
vorite device of the Shef¬ 
field makers 
Of these three early pieces—a hot water jug, a chocolate pot and a 
beaker with wooden base—the latter two show the same silver marks 
sometimes found on Sheffield 
The melon shape is occa¬ 
sionally found in Sheffield 
urns of late Georgian make. 
It has a pleasing decora¬ 
tive quality 
