A Talk on Pewter 
sold as “art pewter,’’ a 
substance retaining the 
workable qualities of the 
genuine article without the 
unamiable characteristics of 
which I have spoken. 
Since pewter is soft, the 
vessels made of it are heavy 
in all their parts, and unable 
to bear very much pressure 
or forcing. So tea-pots 
were commonly made with¬ 
out hinges, or feet, and the 
knifemarks we see on old 
plates show clearly what the 
substance is. 
That the nature of the 
material concerns the deco¬ 
rative artist no less than the 
pewterer proper must be 
sufficiently obvious. The 
best, which was the hardest, 
could be engraved with the 
burin, or chased, or stamped, 
or etched—not always quite 
properly, though, for when 
art-workers follow the fash¬ 
ion rather than their own 
inclination there is often 
much to regret in the evi¬ 
dence they leave of their 
mastery, and excessive elab¬ 
oration is the chief fault of 
the most presumptuous 
pieces. With that excess 
the names of the past-mast¬ 
ers Briot and Enderlein are 
usually associated, and to 
point the moral of a written 
discourse upon pewter 
enough of their work has 
been saved. 
There is opportunity 
here of drawing a distinc¬ 
tion between two classes of 
decorators who, though they 
go by one name, are seldom 
in touch with each other. 
The feeling for art which 
goes in to the metal would be 
rightly described as the craftsman’s art, while 
the other is anyone’s art; but happily the 
distinction of English pewter has been its 
comparative freedom from 
the decoration which is ex¬ 
ternal only, and when the 
attention of the worker is 
confined to the object itself, 
the whole of his feeling for 
art is expressed in the thing 
he makes, and the gain to 
that thing is immense. 
“ Over things either great 
or small the sense which an 
architect has should pre¬ 
vail.” So Pugin said to 
himself while preparing the 
working drawings for the 
architect of the Elouse of 
Eords, and at the same 
time designing its inkstands. 
This is neither a collec¬ 
tor’s, nor a very serious talk 
about pewter. The recent 
revival has brought with it 
a call for as much as can be 
written about, and enough 
has been put into other pa¬ 
pers of what may seem to 
be missing here. At present 
the craze for any old pewter 
is being assiduously nursed 
by the trade, and with the 
recognition of nonsense in 
it, comes the disinclination 
to treat it all seriously. 
'['here was much sound 
workmanship, and as much 
mere common sense in the 
utensils formerly used, but 
of art there was none as a 
rule, and the value, if any 
there be, in the hundreds 
of pots and pans which 
have been resurrected latelv, 
is for the collector, not the 
true lover of art. So much 
for the foolishness of it. 
On the other side it remains 
true, that for a very long 
while, and when the guilds 
were our foster mothers, 
nearly everything that 
would be called plate nowadays, and a thou¬ 
sand utensils besides, were fashioned of pew¬ 
ter entirely. An idea of its genuine worth 
m 
At* ' *vf! 
T. .A- -■ . 
SNUFF BOXES OF PEWTER 
Early XIX Century IVork 
