10 English Silver Toys
here
is little
evidence of the making of silver toys in England before the Reformation. King
Charles II lifted the gloom that seemed to cover the land under Cromwell’s
control. People felt enlightened, and more inclined to spend money on such
silly things as silver toys.
The
English system of marking silver had gone through many changes, but with the
introduction of silver toys and miniatures even more confusing regulations were
added. It must have been bewildering with so many toys being imported, some
marked, and others marked with a variety of silver marks, none of which made
much sense. Added to this we had the mix up caused by our silversmiths changing
their own marks and not registering them. Furthermore, one of our silversmiths
decided to use the same initials as another. Next the maker’s surname had to be
shown and from around 1720 legislation demanded that in addition the initial of
his Christian name also had to be displayed.
It proved
a grave mistake when in 1739 a decision was made to stop stamping miniature
silverware. Some silversmiths continued to mark their wares with their
initials. It is unusual to find English silver toys dating from the nineteenth
century hallmarked, but as we didn’t make many of our own during this period,
it is of no great consequence.
We know
that there were toymakers in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
There were also silversmiths. What we don’t know is which silversmiths were
toymakers. It is also very perplexing as to what English girls and women did
with all the silver toys accumulated in this country, not only those pieces we
imported but also those we made. Very few of them are to be found today from
that period.
So many
pieces of silver toys were produced and so few now remain that one wonders what
happened to them. English doll’s houses were much smaller than their Dutch
counterparts and much less luxuriously furnished, and the English doll’s house
was used more by children than the Dutch ones, but there is no doubt that we
did make silver toys and import many others. Evidence of this can be seen by
the import marks on Dutch toys for sale over here.
Because
of the hallmarking changes of 1697 and post 1720, several great names have
found to be incorrectly attributed to one man who actually never made a single
toy. That man was George Middleton (1660–1745).
There is
some confusion regarding the marks of George Manjoy and George Middleton.
According to the latest research, work stamped MA should be attributed to
George Manjoy, as should work marked GM. He marked his work (of which there was
a great amount, all of the highest standard) GM. On top and below of this were
embossed a number of crescents. This is the written view of Victor Houart but
it conflicts with the view of several earlier authors on this subject who rank
George Middleton as the finest English toymaker.
It is
left to the collector to research further the whys and wherefores of this
argument. So many silver miniatures and silver toys were attributed to this man
Manjoy. This point is made because many collectors will want to include at
least one piece of his work in their collection. His work was only superseded
by that of David Clayton, who was years younger than he was, and is another
indispensable name to have in one’s collection of silver toys.
Clayton
too is involved in a mix-up over initials used in his maker’s mark. But David
Clayton did register his own initials, and stamp hundreds of pieces of his own
work, and some he imported from Holland. There was another silversmith with the
name of Clayton who may have been the son of David. This man was John Clayton.
It is fair to warn the collector that these early silver toymakers did nothing
to make the recognition of their name stamp on silver very easy. There is a
great deal of contradiction regarding to whom the initials really belong – but
this is all part of the fun of collecting. There are many books available with
makers’ marks of this period.
This has
shortened the list of those who actually were tiny toymakers. Further to that
fact, it was discovered that the numerous toy porringers that were about were
not actually porringers at all; they were too large for doll’s house and were
in fact dram cups – little silver cups with two handles to be used by
adults for taking a dram from. They were not toys but we can’t be certain of
their exact use. There have been many suggestions – for instance, they may have
been cups from which to eat porridge or from which to drink (adults only) or
may even have been designed as bowls to hold sweet smelling herbs to counteract
against the evil smells of the day. Whatever they were, they weren’t toys, and
plenty of them were made.
It is
also worth looking out for small mustard spoons. There were hundreds made over
the years but some of them would fit the category of silver toys, or miniatures
because of their size. There are three well-known silversmiths of the
eighteenth century who made spoons: James Tookey, John Robinson and John
Holland. It is quite possible to find copies of these today because there are
so many mustard spoons. The lengths to watch out for are 73 mm and 82 mm. They
should be marked with at least the maker’s initials.
There is
little evidence that silver toys were actually sold direct to the public;
instead they were retailed in shops. During the late eighteenth century there
were large imports of mass-produced iron toys from Germany. The question of
what use the British made of their toys still remains unresolved. As time went
by the demand for tiny silver toys diminished. The doll’s houses in England
were beginning to fill with German pewter imports and English ceramics seem to
take the place of once popular silver items such as tea services and flower
vases. As the market peaked in its general retail trade so interest in silver
toys waned. The wealthy population needed better items on which to spend their
wealth. A collection of silver toys in a doll’s house was no longer of
interest. The shops were becoming full of full of lavish, tempting goods for
the consumer. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu referred to a shop in Bath in a poem
she wrote in 1736:
5 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1736) Farewell to Bath, lines 13–16.
This is a
comment by a consumer referring to the changing fashions in the market, in
particular the collection of silver toys for children which were passing out of
fashion. Not that there is any record that Deards in Bath actually sold silver
toys as we know them, but the silver toys in the sixteenth and
seventeenth century did not necessarily mean ‘toys’ in the true sense of the
word, but silver buckles, vinaigrettes, buttons, snuffboxes, patchboxes and an
assortments of other silver oddments. By the mid eighteenth century London had
seen the best of the silver miniature and toys.
The Dutch
continued to make toys, and England produced very little in the nineteenth
century, although during the mid to latter period the manufacture of toys did
recover a little. This recovery continued and the twentieth century saw better
toys than before coming on the market. A good example is the unmarked linen
press which is a copy of one by Daniel van Strant of Amsterdam, 1754, which
sold at auction at Christie’s on 16 November 2010 for £1200.
It was
also becoming recognisable that children were themselves becoming the new
up-and-coming market, and consumers in their own right. In 1740 John Newbury
published books especially for children. This was followed twenty years later
by the dissected puzzle for children, which was a forerunner of the jigsaw
puzzle.
Silver
miniatures were still produced in both Holland and England during the
nineteenth century, although most of them were copies of earlier times. A
little town named Schoonhoven started a revival of the silver toy trade. The
town not only started producing toys in great profusion but began training
schools for up-and-coming silversmiths as they still do today. Eventually the
adults tired of doll’s houses, cheaper replacements for silver toys took their
place and the interest died – until now, when silver toys are once more in
vogue and a good investment.
It wasn’t
until the Victorian era that a desire for silver toys was resurrected. Even
then they were much bigger than the earlier Georgian toys. An exhibition of
Queen Mary’s treasures, held in the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1954,
showed a silver toy tea set from this period.
The
Victorian silversmiths were renowned for embellishing early antique silver
pieces, large and small, with their own style of decoration. It seemed they
just couldn’t bear to look at an authentic Georgian piece of silver which had
not been decorated without embossing it with some designs or pictures which
they thought increased its beauty when in actual fact it decreased the value of
the item, often by at least half.
This is
very evident when one looks at early English silver toys and miniatures. There
is no evidence that Dutch miniatures made in the eighteenth century had ever
been embossed with cherubs or crawling babies, but there is plenty of evidence
that English silversmiths seemed to delight in importing selected pieces and
embossing them with playful mischievous naked babies and cherubs.
It wasn’t
until the Edwardian period that the desire for making and collecting toy silver
pieces really caught on once again.
There was
a revival of Queen Anne and early Georgian period due to the revival for silver
toys shown by Queen Alexandra. Such was the demand for early reproductions
during this time that the prices of these toys rose at a tremendous rate, as
they are still doing today. According to Houart (1984) early collectors of
eighteenth-century toys together with museums and other private collectors
around the world have caused this continual increase in demand and increase in
price. Houart advised people to collect pieces from the nineteenth century
because of the ever-increasing prices of eighteenth-century pieces. There is
one well-known Birmingham firm named John Rose Ltd who were very much involved
in the production of toys and the same dies are still in use today. The
interest in tiny silver toys and miniatures was such that Birmingham
silversmiths were exporting toys back into Holland and other European
countries.
Victorian
silver toys and miniatures are still available today on the Internet, but the
demand for them is rising daily, as are the prices. One or two nice pieces are
for sale but the collector must be prepared to pay three figures for them. As
so many dealers are now trading online, the chance of finding these toys in
flea markets are getting less. The antique fairs of Great Britain do seem to
hold a good selection of toys and miniatures, but you need to look hard in
their glass display cabinets to spot them.
The
collecting of silver toys is a comparable unknown hobby but there are some real
bargains to be found if the collector is aware of what he or she should be
looking for. One of the big advantages of collecting silver toys and miniatures
is the fact that you are unlikely to find that they are damaged, or have been
repaired or have been faked to make them look like what they are not. Generally
speaking, silver toys remain in very good condition, even though they were made
over 300 years ago, because they were mostly locked away in doll’s houses and
only attended to by responsible adults. They were made by skilled craftsmen who
took pride in their work and produced toys of quality which were meant to last.
Moreover,
if a part has come adrift and has had to be repaired it is very difficult to
hide the fact that soldering work has been carried out as it always leaves a
dark stain. There were so many toys in circulation that there was no need to
counterfeit them. However, toys were copied, and still are today. The copies
are very good and of such high standard that the perpetrators could just have
easily made their own. Unfortunately, the silversmiths responsible also punched
false hallmarks on the pieces. This has caused additional confusion in trying
to ascertain who actually made what. The hallmarks on silver toys, in
particular the Dutch ones, are so small that even with a magnifier it is very
difficult to be certain who made most of them. It was as if the maker were coy
about marking pieces clearly and didn’t want to advertise the fact that they
had made it, even though it was a requirement by law.
Scarcity
of silver during the Napoleonic period, together with the fact that many toy
silversmiths had been recruited to fight in the wars caused a shortage of
skilled craftsmen. The result was that during this period there were fewer
silver toys in comparison to those made in the Georgian reign, and there were
not so many of them. Some silver toys were produced in the provinces, but they
were of little importance. Most of the English silver toys and miniature pieces
were made in London.
The
revival of silver toys was very slow in the early nineteenth century. Very few
pieces of miniature silver are to be found in this period and any that were
made have disappeared into private collections.
Miniature
silver toys can also be found in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. There is on
display a collection of silver toys that is part of the Lady Henriques
Collection. One can see a three pronged fork and knife. This has the Sheffield
hallmark 1832 though at an average of four and half inches long they were not
suitable for a doll’s house.
There
were many lady silversmiths during this period, some of them made silver toys.
One such lady was Sarah Bowman, of Queen Street, Sheffield, who is attributed
with the making of toy teapots and mugs.
