6     A History of Silver Toys

 

 

 

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he first real record of silver toys being made and given to children was in 1404, when Charles VII of France was given a silver rattle and a silver plate when he was one year old. A generous benefactor in 1571 was Claude of France, the daughter of Henry II and Duchess of Lorraine. She ordered a Paris goldsmith named Pierre Hottman to make her a doll’s house with every conceivable household utensil including a set of silver household pots, bowls, plates, ‘such as are made in Paris’.

It was her intention to present this as a gift to a child of the Duchess of Bavaria. This proves beyond question that the manufacture of silver toys in Paris at the end of the sixteenth century was very commonplace – certainly for royalty and the wealthy.

There is still in existence a very detailed journal which was the property of Jean Heroard, the physician in charge of the infant Dauphin of France who was later to become Louis XIII. The journal dates from 1601 and covers events in the young prince’s life until the death of Jean Heroard in 1628.The journal tells us that the young Dauphin took delight in martialling his servants in the palace around in military fashion. His love of toy war was encouraged to teach him the rudiments of military discipline and warfare.

In his journal Heroard quoted the young Dauphin as saying, when he was only five years old, in a letter written either by him or dictated by him to the King, who was then engaged in a battle with Duc de Bouillon at Sedan in Northern France:

 

I have been to the Arsenal, Papa. M. de Rosney (Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de Sully) showed it me full of beautiful arms ... and he gave me some sweetmeats and a little silver cannon.

 

The little future king was so besotted with his cannon that he tied it with a garter to his pinafore so that he wouldn’t lose it. However, it was his grandmother, Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre and mother of Henry IV of France, who started the collection of silver toys in the Bourbon family. It was passed to the young Dauphine’s father, Henry of Navarre (Henry IV) She also acquired a ‘dolls set of silver table plenishments set with diamonds’ This set, along with all the toys of her collection have vanished, and it is only from her inventory that we know they ever existed.

Silver toys in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century were made predominantly for the children of kings and princes. Louis XIII (1601–1643) was fortunate to receive many toys made of silver. He was given a miniature watch as a present by his mother Marie de Medici, and in the same year his mother had arranged for the young prince to have 300 silver soldiers made for him by Nicholas Rogier, who was gold- and silversmith to the Dauphin. Some of these toy soldiers were inherited by his son, Louis XIV (1638–1715).

These were further augmented with more soldiers and cannons, all of which were intended to teach the young princes how to practise military manoeuvres. Indeed, the liking for military artefacts by the young Dauphins continued through several generations. No cost, it seems, was spared and ten million francs were spent on a huge collection of silver soldiers and militia. However, Louis XIV decided to melt most of them down to help pay for his wars. The sad part was they only raised three million francs. What a pity there are no toys left from these early royal collections: all have vanished without trace and only written evidence is available to show that they ever actually existed.

The manufacture and collection of silver toys has never received high praise or acknowledgement; very few museums have collections, and very little is written about them or displayed in magazines or periodicals. Even books on silver, not specialising on the subject of silver toys, devote only a few pages to the subject. Times are changing though, and today one can see the works of these wonderful craftsmen from years ago.

The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, has acquired a handsome collection of miniatures and doll’s houses, but unfortunately they have moved most of these over to the Museum of Childhood at Bethnal Green, London. There is still a small silver toy display, but not as good as it used to be.

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, still have a very good selection of silver toys, but because the museums have bought so many collections as they became available, this has resulted in a shortage, so prices are rising for those few early pieces at a ridiculous rate. The majority of collectors today would agree, when asked to pay £2000–3000 plus commission and VAT for one tiny coffee pot, that the prices are far beyond the pocket of the majority of collectors.

The Dutch were surging ahead in the manufacture of silver toys, the most productive period being 1725–50. England was still suffering under Puritanism, a product of Oliver Cromwell’s regime, discouraging all fun and games and frivolity. Unlike Holland, we had forgotten how to enjoy ourselves. Any effort made by the English to make toys like the Dutch only resulted in boring tea sets and mundane household furniture, although we were well aware of the toys Holland was making, because they soon started exporting them to Britain. Proof of this can be seen on the import marks stamped on their exports.

According to Charles Oman, Head of Metalwork at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and an expert on silverware, ‘It is strange how we never even copied them, because the copying of toys made by different silversmiths seems to have always been in vogue’ (Houart, 1984, p. 179). As to whether we were skilled enough is beyond question. We just never did copy their work, although English silver toys were equal in quality to those of the Dutch, if not better in many cases, especially the work of George Manjoy. For instance, we go into raptures over the outstanding one-offs made by our top silversmiths; most of which are now in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

When the Netherlands were producing silver toys it appears that their customers were not the men and women of that era, but wealthy royalty, landowners and businessmen, who bought the toys for their own pleasure as well as that of their children’s. It was the adults who built up vast collections of silver toys. It is folly to think that every child had a toy box filled with these wonderful fruits of a true craftsman’s labours. They were still very expensive, and each one took a long time to make. The conditions the silversmiths worked in, with poor lighting, dusty workplaces and very limited tools, are all the more reason why each toy should be regarded as a work of art and explains why they were – and still are – so expensive.

Today, a tiny George I silver toy teapot one inch high is far more expensive than a full-size, four-piece Georgian tea service. However, the Netherlands did produce thousands of tiny silver toys, and really let their imagination run amok in the ideas they came up with in what to make next.

As there were so many toys being produced in Holland from 1725 to 1750 that they not only satisfied their own market requirements but had to be exported, this makes nonsense of the supposition that these toys were either the work of apprentices or were samples that a salesman would present to a prospective customer who was looking for a frying pan made of iron. Besides, even if this was the case they wouldn’t require thousands of them.

Occasionally, Christie’s of London do hold an auction of someone’s collection, but they are rare. The last one was held on 16 November 2010 and there was little available to the collector under £1000. One item of great interest sold at this auction was a Dutch toy cruet set. It showed the maker’s mark of William van Strant, Amsterdam, 1735, who was a highly respected master silversmith. The cruet set was only 7 cm high and the price paid for the cruet was £6000.

Victor Houart, in his book Miniature Silver Toys, advises collectors to concentrate on eighteenth-century toys. That was thirty years ago. Times have changed and the market most available to the collector today is that of nineteenth- to twenty-first-century toys, of which there are still plenty available, especially as the museums have not yet decided to buy them. The better nineteenth-century toys are fetching the higher figures and even at today’s prices they are still a good investment.

 

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The quality and quantity of silver for doll’s houses and miniatures declined after 1750, which was the most prolific period of production. Interest wained in the doll’s house from an adult collector’s point of view, and it became more a plaything of the child. The splendid expensive fittings were mainly being replaced with more mundane practical toys made of German pewter, brass and china. Proof of this can be seen in the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, London, where there are lots of nineteenth-century doll’s houses.

Although the furnishings of doll’s houses were mainly the prerogative of the adult, the original intention was for children to play with them, and many did, though for the majority of children the furnishings were not silver, but copper and pewter.

The doll’s houses were made for little girls to play and act the part their mother or maid would play in their own homes. They could be as large as a third of the size of the original item they were representing. These larger toys were also made of silver, though unfortunately very few examples of them exist today. These larger toys were known as the poppengoeden.

The Dutch are renowned for their skill in producing large quantities of tiny silver and gold toys of an exceptional high standard. They made every conceivable toy including horses and carriages, dogs and cats. They made frying pans with toy fish in the pan, and grills with meat on, tea services, doll’s prams and furniture. Candlesticks were another item high on the list of popular toys. The English silversmiths only produced kitchenware and tableware; and the occasional piece of furniture.

The daughter of Henry II of France in 1556 in a moment of generosity ordered that a selection of silver toys which should include bowls, plates, buffet pots and a large assortment of other items, be given as a gift to the children of the Duchess of Bavaria. It has been discovered that in the plate inventory of the mother of Henry IV of France (1553–1610) she possessed a set of miniature silver dolls toys set with diamonds.

The wealthy children of the United Kingdom were not as fortunate as their Dutch counterparts. They were not privileged to enjoy the pleasure of silver toys to furnish their doll’s houses until after the restoration of Charles II in 1660. The earliest hallmarks prove that it wasn’t until 1665 that they started to be manufactured in London and it was uncommon for hallmarks of toys made in the provinces to be found.

It was fashionable for the children of wealthy Stuart families to furnish their doll’s houses with every conceivable manner of household objects, all made out of silver. These included fire grates, bedsteads, sideboards, commodes, tables, chairs and tea-making equipment and almost everything one would associate with a home in those days. As collections were handed on from one generation to another, and then added to, one could see how a collection would grow and an extensive range could be amassed over the years.

One interesting fact is the close likeness of the toys to the actual items they were copying. This was despite the fact that the silversmiths had to meet budgets and that not everyone could afford the best; the workmanship therefore left something to be desired and the finer details were often omitted to reduce costs.

   However there was always a good silversmith somewhere who would not sacrifice skilled workmanship and it was this craftsman that took the range of the toys even further. Miniature figures of men, women, children and babies were put on the market. There were cooks, butlers, and household servants, horses and carriages, household pets like parrots and their cages, cats, dogs, beggars and soldiers. The list was endless. There was nothing that could not be copied in silver to make a toy house as complete as possible.