26 
House & Garden 
P 
E W 
TER 
AS DECO 
The porringer was a favorite 
design with old pewter mak¬ 
ers. This example is Flemish, 
of the late 17 th Century 
RATI 
Both Old and New Pewter Have Decided Decorative Qualities That 
Are Appreciated by the Collector 
O N 
EMILY BURBANK 
T HOSE who own a Tudor house, a Ja¬ 
cobean room, Colonial mansion or re¬ 
juvenated farmhouse of the Colonial 
period have experimented with the decorative 
value of pewter. They know that if allowed to 
make its own effect, in an appropriate setting, 
nothing is more attractive than the soft gleam¬ 
ing gray color of old tankards, plaques, candle¬ 
sticks and the innumerable objects to be had in 
this semi-precious metal. The finest quality of 
pewter is pure tin alloyed with copper or a 
very small amount of lead or 
other substance to make it 
possible to work with. The 
French word for both pewter 
and tin is etain. 
Pewter cannot be success¬ 
fully employed as a note of 
interest in periods other than 
its own, nor does it combine 
with objects of art less sub¬ 
stantial in type. It is as¬ 
sumed that the amateur goes 
in for pewter because at¬ 
tracted by the artistic beauty 
of line—it reflects all styles 
—color and quality of 
quaintness; the historical 
story, its “marks” and the 
meaning of decorative em¬ 
blems, is usually the affair 
of the professional. 
The writer had the privi¬ 
lege of living in the midst of 
an interesting collection of old pewter recently 
in quaint Chelsea, London. The owners had 
arranged a Jacobean dining room to frame 
their pewter, and because allowed to serve as 
the only decoration of the room, the lines, color 
and “texture” counted to great advantage. In 
looking from the frieze of large plaques on a 
narrow ledge at the top of dull brownish-gray 
walls to the rows and rows of plates in a big 
plate-rack over the low Jacobean sideboard, 
and then at suspended tankards of varying 
shapes and sizes, this pewter 
took on the air of a necessary 
part of the room furnished 
with sturdy old black oak. 
Books on pewter are easily 
obtainable, but one fact 
seems not to be generally 
known, even by collectors of 
fine pieces of the pewterer’s 
art: that today, in a very 
few corners of the old world, 
artist-pewterers still design, 
mould, and sit at their wheels 
to trim and polish, exactly in 
the manner of the 17th and 
18th Centuries; except that 
the wheel may now be turned 
by electrical power instead of 
the foot. 
It was the writer’s good 
fortune to meet many times 
in his shop and home one of 
these few remaining artists, 
Whale oil lamps, often made in 
pewter, were household necessi¬ 
ties in American homes of the 
18 th and early 19 th Centuries 
(Left and Right ) Two excellent 
examples of the pewter maker’s 
art are found in these German 
plates of the 17th Century 
Even the tobacco box was executed 
in pewter, as witness this 18 th 
Century English example 
Few master-workers in pewter are left today. This little foundry 
of C. Moriggi in Vevey, Switzerland, still continues and represents 
the fourth generation to carry on the classic traditions of the art 
A water pitcher of Britannia ware, 
which is modern pewter. Courtesy 
of Reed & Barton 
