Jewelry Pearls

Sterling means a silver alloy of standard quality which is 925 parts pure silver and 75 parts copper alloy.

The term undoubtedly originated with early English coins and may have derived from the word staer meaning a starling, because some of Edward the Confessor’s pennies bore figures offour birds. However, in the r 3th Century, King John brought coiners to England from the Netherlands and the Hanseatic cities to improve the quality of English coinage. These coiners were called Easterlings. Some authorities believe the term Sterling evolved when Easterling was contracted to Sterling.

Little is known of English silver-craft prior to r 660. At this period in history, English and French monarchs and nobility kept their wealth in silver or gold objets d’art, not only for their pleasure and use, but as bullion to be melted down as needed to finance wars. In France, during the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715), some forty ordinances and edicts were issued for the melting down of silver and gold articles, and though the reasons for the Royal edicts were varied, the tragic result was the almost total destruction of France’s finest silver and gold pieces. In England, so few pieces survived the austere rule of Oliver Cromwell (r653-r658) that the Coronation of Charles II had to be postponed to allow time for the designing and making of new silver regalia.

After the Restoration, with the return of Charles II to the throne, England’s silver-craft began to flourish; r 660 therefore, is considered an arbitrary date for the beginning of the production of England silver as we know it today. Monarchs and wealthy patrons began commissioning goldsmiths to design and produce silver chandeliers, sconces, mirror frames, platters, and tea services, even fui niture embellished with silver. It was the Silver Era! When sets of flatware came into style, invited guests were no longer required to bring their own knives and forks.

At the turn of the t Sth century, during the reign of George I in England (r 714-1 727), Paul de Lamerie, one of the greatest of all goldsmiths, fled warring France with his father and other French Huguenots to seek asylum in England. Stimulated by the work of such great artisans, English goldsmiths began to design and produce some of the finest silver pieces of all times. So began the golden age of English silver, commonly referred to as “18th Century or Georgian silver.”

Amongst the more peaceful and picturesque activities of the goldsmiths was their devotion to St. Dunstan, who in his lifetime had certainly been a good patron of their craft and whom his Post-Conquest biographers credited both with a practical knowledge of their art and with the celebrated victory over a devil. In the saint’s honor the goldsmiths kept a light in the church of St. John Zacchary which remained the centre of the goldsmiths’ quarter up to the seventeenth century. On St. Dunstan’s Eve and twice on his day the members of the company went in procession to St. Paul’s in which was a chapel dedicated to their patron, and sustained themselves with a dinner in his honor at which was used a cup surmounted by his effigy. These functions came to an end at the Reformation, and in 1547 is recorded the destruction both of St. Dunstan’s Cup and of the silver gilt figure of the saint which adorned Goldsmiths’ Hall.

The history of the gild during the Renaissance was a checkered one. The latter part of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth century saw a return of corporate prosperity but in 1627 the company was forced to sell plate to the value of £407 in order to pay its contribution to a forced loan which the King had levied on the City. During the Civil War period Goldsmiths’ Hall became the Parliament’s exchequer.

Besides its routine work of preserving the standard and purity of gold and silver work, the principal activity of the company during the Renaissance seems to have been a struggle to preserve the trade as far as possible in English hands and to limit the intrusion of foreigners-a matter to which we will have to recur later. In 1571 it was enacted that no craftsman might become a master until he had produced a ‘masterpiece’. The type of object to be made was not prescribed, as it was by some German gilds, and no piece made for this purpose has ever been identified. The custom had apparently fallen into disuse by 16°7 when it was reenacted with the professed aim of raising the standard of general proficiency amongst young craftsmen who, it was complained, were tending to specialize in the making of certain objects or the use of certain techniques and thus compared unfavorably with foreign workmen. It is unlikely that this order had more than a transient effect as the tendency to specialize certainly did not disappear.

Though the fortunes of individual goldsmiths could not remain unaffected by the political and religious changes, the times were certainly propitious. The prosperity of the London goldsmiths was shared by their provincial brethren whose gilds began to function with much greater efficiency than previously. The tendency for goldsmiths to seek prosperity outside the stricter limits of their profession became increasingly marked. Thus in 1589 John Spilman, a German, obtained a license to set up a paper-mill at Dartford, whilst in 16°9 Hugh Myddelton undertook the construction of the New River to supply London with water. The important part played by goldsmiths in the development of banking in this country was largely the unexpected result of the seizure by Charles Lin 1640 of the deposits of the precious metals which they and other merchants had been wont to store for safety in the Tower. This tyrannical act obliged goldsmiths henceforth to assume the responsibility for the keeping of their own reserves and forced them to construct strong-rooms in their houses. Before long they began to accept for safekeeping the money of their clients who at first paid for this privilege but soon began to receive interest in return for permitting the goldsmith the temporary use of their deposit.

When, with the Restoration, we enter the modern period in the history of English domestic silver we find the craft definitely fallen in popular esteem from its place amongst the major arts. This decline was for a time obscured by the important part played in the national affairs by the goldsmith bankers, but when the two professions became distinct in the eighteenth century the change in the status of the goldsmith is evident. The goldsmith, however great his artistic proficiency, had become no more than a superior craftsman or a prosperous tradesman. An increasing tendency towards specialization is visible both amongst firms and craftsmen, though much elasticity remained even to the end of our period. The decline in the social status of the goldsmith did not signify any decrease in the demand for his service and there can be no doubt of the general prosperity of the trade.

Another change which dates from the end of the seventeenth century is the gradual decline in the importance of the Goldsmiths’ Company in common with all the other City gilds. In 1679 the author of The Touchstone bewails the number of goldsmiths who chose to be members of other companies. The Goldsmiths’ Company, however, no longer excluded members of other crafts so that it is not surprising that it should gradually have come to take less and less interest in trade matters. It is not improbable that its prestige with members of the trade suffered at the close of the seventeenth century, from its inability to obtain from the Government any species of protection for the native craftsmen from the competition of the Huguenot goldsmiths who settled in this country in large numbers in the years following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Though at first the Company returned sympathetic answers to those who petitioned them to take action against the invaders, it became obvious after the Revolution that it was useless to attempt to persuade the Government, which owed its existence to the deposition of a Catholic king, to take action against industrious foreigners who had been driven from their country because they were Protestants.

Even though the collection of the revenues of the Company’s estates would appear to have been the main interest of the members during the eighteenth century, we must not overlook the fact that at this same period the efficiency of the assay-office was greater than ever before.

No work of art can be properly appreciated if it is considered entirely apart from its maker, and it is necessary, therefore, before approaching the subject of English domestic silver, to obtain some idea of the successive phases in the history of the craft of the workers in the precious metals.

The inclusion of what is called indifferently goldsmiths’ or silversmiths’ work amongst the minor arts (as opposed to the major arts of architecture, painting and sculpture) is a comparatively recent arrangement. Throughout the Middle Ages and down to the end of the sixteenth century goldsmiths ranked as highly as any other sort of artist but from the seventh to the eleventh century they had definitely been supreme.

It would be idle to pretend that the period during which the status of the goldsmith ranked highest, was also the greatest in the history of English domestic silver. Tragically few examples of the secular plate of this age have survived and contemporary records clearly show that the works of greatest importance were made in the service of the Church. This does not, of course, imply that the rich altar frontals, shrines and chalices which were made for wealthy abbeys were usually the work of monkish goldsmiths. A certain number of goldsmiths appear to have entered monasteries during the earlier part of the Middle Ages whilst monasticism still held a strong appeal for the popular imagination, but there is little evidence that skill as a goldsmith was often acquired by those who had already entered the cloister. The number and importance of goldsmith monks must not be exaggerated even though, in the remoter periods, their names have been recorded by monastic chroniclers more often than those of their lay contemporaries with whom they worked side by side in the abbey workshops. From the twelfth century, when Government records come to supplement monastic chronicles, we begin to see clearly how small is the number of the known monastic goldsmiths as compared to the lay.

It is important, then, to realize that the ordinary goldsmith, even in the early Middle Ages, was not a monk vowed to a life which relieved him of the normal cares of the struggle for existence but a layman following a highly skilled profession, of economic importance, and accounted remunerative. Since precious metals formed the raw materials of the goldsmith’s craft, it was always necessary that those who followed the profession should possess business as well as artistic talent. As a consequence the medieval goldsmith frequently did not confine himself to the production of plate and jewelry but dabbled in many lucrative side lines. Like the members of several of the other richer crafts they often acted as pawnbrokers. Their administrative, as well as their technical and artistic capacity, made them especially useful to-the Crown, particularly during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the machinery of government was becoming rapidly more complicated. At this time we find the royal goldsmiths not only providing the King with costly works of art but administering the mints and exchanges and supervising the erection and decoration of the royal buildings.

It is not, therefore, surprising that as early as 1180 the London goldsmiths should have had a gild of their own, for which they were fined the sum of 45 marks (which they probably never paid), because it had been founded without the royal license. It was not, however, until 1327 that they received their first charter from Edward III. It particularly ordained that the goldsmiths should all have their shops in the High Street of the Cheap (where the majority was already established) and that no silver or gold should be sold elsewhere in London than in the King’s Exchange or the Cheap. Complaint had been made that there had been goldsmiths working in obscure streets where, being free from supervision, they were able to buy and melt stolen plate and to manufacture new plate of base alloy which they were able to pass off on unwary customers. Of their later medieval charters that of 1462 is of great importance. In it the company was not only granted the use of a common seal but was entrusted with the supervision of the craft throughout England with power to punish offenders.

As a body it always ranked amongst the most powerful of the London gilds. In 1267 the Goldsmiths had their celebrated battle against the Taylors in which five hundred men are said to have been engaged (including those unattached to either gild) and which resulted a few days later in the hanging of a number of the combatants who had had the misfortune to be apprehended. Similar incidents are reported in later years. Numerically it never ranked amongst the greater gilds. In 1477 its membership was 198; including 41 foreigners, but in 1483 it had sunk to 149. In 1469 it was called upon to provide 100 men for the city watch, seven other companies having to provide a larger number. On the other hand seventeen goldsmiths had acted as lord mayor before the year 1524, several of whom had held office on more than one occasion.