BOXING CLEVER: A CASE FOR THE COLLECTOR

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09 July 2010

Collectors’ Cases, Caskets & Containers at The London Silver Vaults

Every type of box that you could imagine has been made from silver, from gem-encrusted silk-lined caskets for precious jewels to a Georgian nutmeg grater which stores the nutmegs. Many are the object of collecting enthusiasms such as vinaigrettes, patch boxes, snuff boxes or card cases.

The 30 specialist shops at The London Silver Vaults sell boxes of all periods for every collector. From the useful to the unusual, the Vaults summer selling exhibition will include an 1884 Vesta case in the form of a Victorian footballer’s leg kicking a football by S. Blanckensee & Son, a lavishly ornamented French agate and diamond sealing wax case, a bougie (French for candle) box dated 1792, a Victorian vinaigrette in the form of a swallow by Frederick Edmonds of London, a 1910 silver gilt paint box, gilt-lined table boxes, biscuit barrels, and a silver boxed man’s travel case from 1846 by London’s Charles Reilly and William Storer.

If a container has a lid, hinged or lift-off, it’s a box. The term ‘box’ probably came from the box tree, used for making wooden boxes before silver became popular and affordable for storing everyday personal and household essentials. Silver boxes came in some surprising forms – fish, birds, animals, shells, leaves. And over the centuries the box lid provided a ‘canvas’ for the silversmith’s art. In fact, silver expert Eric Delieb considered that the ‘applied ornament’ on the lid was akin to the painter’s chiaroscuro, enabling the silversmith to achieve similar depth and perspective in pictures in silver.

So, on silver boxes we find every type of embellishment such as raised, cast, pique, die-stamped or embossed figures and floral motifs. Engraving was also popular, with the engraver often copying the paintings of the day. The bright-cut method, using a scouper, cut a more freestyle pattern into the silver. Engine-turning produced patterns with a repeat, such as the popular basketweave and barleycorn patterns. Exceptional delineation and shading was achieved using acid etching, often framed by an elaborate engraved floral cartouche.

Many of these designs were presented on the tiniest of containers. In the exhibition, a round patch box dated 1702 by Thomas Kedder is a mere inch in diameter; showing an embossed bust of Queen Anne, it was possibly a memento of her coronation. Snuff boxes were also diminutive so they could tuck into a waistcoat pocket. An oval continental snuff box c1730 has, inside the lid, a painted ivory and enamelled automaton of a masked courtesan; her mask can be moved by a concealed tab in the box rim. The lid is engraved with a hunting scene. Also on show is a plain Victorian silver box with gilt interior, opened by pinching the sides, probably for tobacco, made by one of Birmingham’s leading boxmakers George Unite.

The vinaigrette, the successor to the pomander, appeared first in the late 1750s. The early ones were usually small and rectangular with a perfumed sponge held beneath a roughly pierced grille. Used to ward off unpleasant odours (indoors, outdoors and personal - an everyday affrontery to polite nostrils), they were ubiquitous by the 1790s and much better designed. An example of a rare vinaigrette in the exhibition is a tiny silver box with an unusual butterfly grille and gilt interior, by Richard Lockwood and John Douglas of London dated 1800.

In the home, loose tea was often kept under lock and key as it was expensive until the punitive import taxes were dropped at the end of the 1700s. An example of a lockable tea-caddy in the exhibition is one made by the Bateman family in 1800 with a finial shaped like a pineapple, the symbol of hospitality. From the late 1800s there are also examples of tea caddies from China, one such shaped like a pumpkin and decorated on the body with chrysanthemums, bamboo and birds, and from Japan, a more conventional canister shape, decorated with iris.

Sewing materials, toiletries, medicines and tooth powders and brushes were also housed in silver boxes. By contrast, a French sewing etui (from the Old French ‘to contain’) is housed in an ivory case and the implements are in gold, finely engraved with leaves and scrolls with a cross hatch infill. The box is in excellent condition. A delightful miniature silver gilt paintbox made in London in 1910 still has its original watercolour blocks.

Cases for visiting cards were popular from the 1800s and today they are sought after collectables. Well known churches, famous houses or castles were often depicted raised, or in high relief, and are known as ‘castle-tops’ to today’s collector who will always be on the lookout for another building or even just a different angle to add to a collection. Two castle-tops in the exhibition show churches in relief. One has a die-stamped picture of Newstead Abbey (family home of Lord Byron till 1818) and a second is a superb example of die-stamping and hand-chasing, showing St Paul’s Cathedral, made by Frederick Marson of Birmingham in 1845.

London and Birmingham, which gained its own assay office in 1773, were both important centres for decorated silver boxes and will be well represented in the exhibition. One such name in the early 1800s was James Taylor from Birmingham who also had a shop at 2 Bouverie Street in London, off Fleet Street, just a short walk from the Silver Vaults. Boxing Clever runs from
1st June to 30th September 2010.

ENDS