The Golden Age of Silver Metalworks!

Shining, rare and exotic.

From the earliest times, silver has been accumulated by the wealthy

as an expression of power.

And the malleability of this precious metal

has made it attractive for craftsmen keen to fashion it to the latest taste.

But never more so than in the 18th and 19th centuries,

when Britain's rich were richer than ever before,

when fashionability was key

and silver was available in new-found quantity.

In this era, the upper echelons of society

built impressive collections of this dazzling metal.

And with silversmiths of unparalleled skill flocking to British shores,

these collections became expressions of the most exquisite craftsmanship in Europe.

I'll be uncovering the British love affair with silver,

tapping into the fantastical 18th century world of exuberance,

display, creative indulgence.

This was the era when wealth and display

were focused around the dining table

and vast fortunes were spent on dazzling silver tableware.

I'll also explore how exciting new dining styles in the 19th century

provided yet more excuse for innovation...

before industrialisation

and mass production began to widen the appeal of this precious metal.

These two extraordinary centuries reveal the characters,

the dinner parties

and the stories behind internationally renowned silver

that takes your breath away.

I'm going to immerse myself in the golden age of silver.

In Britain, one metal has sparkled more brightly than all others -

silver.

From Greek and Roman times,

silver coinage represented portable wealth of a very precise value.

And this precious metal has always been a sign of status

and conspicuous consumption.

Monarchs and lords have commissioned extravagant domestic silver.

From elaborate water fountains,

to delicate egg cups. Gilt tea canisters,

to stunning basins for washing privileged hands.

But in the 18th and 19th centuries,

with the landed gentry at their wealthiest and most powerful,

silver had its finest shimmering moment,

creating the most ostentatious dining tables in the land.

The rich were very rich indeed.

In 18th-century England, the aristocracy represented 0.02% of the population,

but they controlled government, enjoyed vast wealth

and owned 20% of England's land value.

The display of this wealth, preferably the tasteful display,

was every gentleman's privilege.

Silver was one such privilege.

It was originally sourced from central Europe,

but from the 16th century onwards,

we increasingly traded in woollen cloth for Spanish silver,

mined from great reserves discovered in the New World.

By the 18th century, Britain had become a huge economic force,

with its merchants trading around the world, creating vast wealth

and the prosperous elite could spend their fortunes on silver.

The wealthy, particularly the aristocracy,

ever ready to patronise London's renowned and skilled craftsmen,

made the most of this precious metal that flooded into the country.

BELLS

But it was here around the dinner table where those with money,

celebrity or blue blood showed their metal.

Where politics, romance and socialising took place

and it was dazzling.

If you were at the top of society, then you wanted the best

and so you wanted the most expensive, luxurious

and fashionable objects and those were made in silver.

So, who were the men behind the silver?

Men like Paul Crespin, pictured here.

Many silversmiths working in England had one trait in common -

a background of suffering that belies the beauty

and creativity of their craft.

David Willaume the younger,

Peter Archambo,

Paul de Lamerie. These are all French Protestants.

'In the face of religious persecution,

'their families fled France in the late 17th century...'

..and in the process, changed the face of English silverware forever.

The men responsible for this exquisite work,

such as this urn chased with shells and scrolls,

were of French Protestant origin,

known as Huguenots.

But behind the sparkle lies the unsavoury story of oppression.

Protestants were, at best, tolerated in Catholic France,

due to the Edict of Nantes -

a law which promoted basic religious tolerance.

In 1685, Louis XIV revoked this vital edict.

It was no longer legal to be a practising Protestant in France.

The Huguenots were in turmoil.

They faced arrest, imprisonment, torture, execution.

It was a terrible predicament.

To leave France for a Protestant was illegal.

Certainly, they couldn't take property out of the country.

So, if they were caught, they could be imprisoned,

sent to the galleys, killed.

Despite the high risks, from 1670 to 1710,

around 50,000 Huguenots flooded into Protestant England.

In London, Spitalfields, on the northeast edge of the city,

became a stronghold of Huguenot silk weavers,

while leading silversmiths settled here in Soho

from the late 17th century.

It's now strange to think about it,

but at that period, French was a very common language on these streets.

The word "refugee" entered the English language

to describe these desolate Protestants.

The Huguenots brought their skills,

their crafts and their French taste with them.

This was vitally important, because in London in the late 17th century,

the French court style was the height of fashion, the height of taste.

People importing goods from Paris,

imitating France in every way they could.

So can you imagine in London, hundreds,

if not thousands of skilled French crafts men suddenly arrived?

The Huguenots' refugee status

made them willing to work longer hours for lower rates.

As a group of outsiders, the Huguenots stuck together,

intermarrying and finding work for each other.

They quickly established a reputation for the quality of their work.

I'm meeting with silver historian Christopher Hartop

in a French Protestant church to discuss the refugee's struggle.

So tell me, what were conditions like for the Huguenots when they arrived in London?

It was probably pretty daunting.

One and two becomes a multitude of Huguenots coming in.

They usually just had the clothes on their backs.

-Right.

-So the tide, the public reception starts to turn.

So, 20 years later, there's a petition to the Goldsmiths' Company

saying that these Huguenots are taking our work away from us.

If you wanted to have a shop and sell your own silver,

you had to take it to Goldsmiths' Hall,

where it was assayed and then hallmarked.

And in order to do that, you had to be a freeman of the City of London.

Not necessarily a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Guild,

you had to be a freeman, a member of one of the guilds.

This is fascinating. There were people who wanted to stop them expanding.

-They worked a closed shop against them, I suppose.

-It did, in time.

So you find people like Archambo actually becoming a member of the Butchers' Company.

-Really?!

-He wasn't a butcher.

'But the Huguenots had talents the English couldn't compete with.'

I mean, this is a typical English piece of silver,

from the 1670s. It's really a bit like folk art.

-It's quite crudely done, it's quite light...

-Yes.

..made of very thin gauge silver. The handles are cast in sand,

so you can see there's lots of granulation, of air holes in it.

-Really interesting.

-What the people at the top of the social scale wanted were French things

and this is a typical Huguenot-style thing.

It's by Jacob Margas and made in London in the 1690s.

It's a much heavier gauge.

It's a baroque style, very simple. This is done by lost wax casting,

where you can get much more detail.

And so it's much more highly finished than this.

Absolutely, yes, yes.

Baroque was the grand sculptural style

employed across the arts in the 17th and 18th century

to impress and overawe.

It used elaborate ornament, inspired by natural forms,

to appeal to the senses, as well as the intellect

and it showed just what Huguenot silversmiths could do.

But the silversmith every aristocrat wanted to commission was Paul De Lamerie,

who lived and worked here in what is now London's Chinatown.

The Victoria and Albert Museum describes Paul de Lamerie

as the greatest silversmith working in England in the 18th century.

Now that's quite an accolade.

Despite a troubled start in life,

de Lamerie becomes the most sought-after silversmith of his generation.

Paul de Lamerie seems to have had an extraordinary grasp of the market,

of contemporary taste.

He had an eye on the best craftsmen

and he was also a brilliant networker

and had extraordinary business acumen.

So it was that combination of skills

that resulted in him producing silver

which had that must-have quality.

De Lamerie's family arrived in London by 1691,

settling here, on Gerrard Street.

It was once a bustling Huguenot heartland.

De Lamerie, the son of French gentry, now the son of a refugee,

follows silversmithing as an honourable career.

He was apprentice to a goldsmith

and he became free in 1713, registered a mark

and within three years, he'd been appointed one of the goldsmiths to the King

and in fact, Paul de Lamerie himself became a captain in the militia...

-Yes, yes.

-..was extremely successful and died extremely rich.

The Huguenots took silverware in Britain

to unprecedented heights of craftsmanship.

When a new decorative style called rococo

swept through the French court of Louis XV from the 1720s,

the Huguenots were poised in London to create a British interpretation.

Rococo was much freer than baroque,

was asymmetrical, curvaceous and inspired by nature,

featuring playful riots of flowers, shells and foliage.

The English aristocrats were swept away by rococo

and it's here that de Lamerie excelled.

If you analyse this cup, it's a riot of ornament.

If you take away the ornament,

I'm not sure you're left with any structure.

The structure is subsumed by the ornament.

So if you look at the lid,

what in the early 18th century would've been a finial,

perhaps in the form of an acorn, has turned into a bunch of grapes

and is asking to be viewed from every angle.

A rococo object is really inviting you

to inspect the detail of ornament.

You get the rise of the art of the chaser,

the very talented craftsmen, who thinks in three dimensions.

To understand these techniques,

I'm visiting contemporary silversmith Theresa Nguyen

in her Birmingham studio.

Just from one material,

there's different examples of what can be achieved in metal,

so you can create very fluid forms and it's a very robust and enduring material.

'Repousse and chasing are the first methods to be unravelled.'

Repousse is a technique where metal is formed by hammering

from the back of the piece of metal.

So here I'm using a steel punch and a chasing hammer.

So repousse creates a low-relief pattern

on the back of the design

and this will be the front of the design

and the next stage would be to hand-chase the details

to add definition to this repousse relief.

With a technique of chasing,

you achieve this embossed impression into the silver.

Another surface decoration technique we explore is engraving,

used to stunning effect on this piece, called Awakening Two.

The silver now captures and reflects every ray.

Here I'm going to use a graver tool, which has a sharp V shape'

which then is used to cut and remove the metal.

This is the unforgiving bit, isn't it? Every mistake, you can't put it right, can you?

That's right, so you do need quite a steady hand

and the angle of cut creates these light-reflecting surfaces onto the silver.

So, here you have some examples that I've created earlier.

It's very lively, isn't it? Gosh. The light, bouncing around, yes.

It brings it to life, yes.

'I want to relate Theresa's demonstrations to the glorious past masters.'

I've got a mid-18th century sketch here,

by Nicholas Sprimont, of a soup tureen

and I want to find out what he was envisaging.

Well, initially I assume that the tureen was hand-raised

from an oval sheet of silver.

This piece is made up of several cast elements

and the chaser would then use various steel punches

to define all the different details.

So, it looks like it's integrated into the whole object...

-Oh, OK.

-..just from my own experience of working with silver,

there's that, almost connection I have with those past makers, like Paul de Lamerie.

Although I appreciate the craftsmanship of the silversmiths I've been exploring,

it's all too easy to romanticise their world.

In the 18th century, the silver trade was a hungry business machine.

Successful silversmiths like Paul de Lamerie had a huge network of staff working for them

and they delegate or outsource work as a matter of course.

They created a brand and they supervised, designed the label.

They kept the quality up, they didn't actually make everything.

I think probably the closest analogy is the car.

You buy a car, a make of car because you think it's good,

but of course, it's a product of lots of different processes,

designers, manufacturers. It's something that all comes together.

I think it in no way lessens our appreciation of Lamerie.

This dish, made for Lord Maynard in 1736,

is a great example of De Lamerie's outsourcing.

It was created by a mysterious craftsman,

known only as a Maynard Master,

yet was hallmarked by de Lamerie.

It stretches the possibilities of silver.

The silhouette is broken up

and it's broken up to invite in the four elements -

fire, air, water and earth.

I particularly like, again, the characteristic rococo pootie,

who's bringing Lord Maynard's coat of arms to life.

I think this is utterly astonishing.

It's made for the patron as a status symbol,

but also to indicate that the patron is aware,

is appreciating the extraordinary heights of achievement

in the craft of silver-making in the 1730s.

Silversmiths at the top of their profession could prosper so enormously

that they themselves became landed gentry.

The Willaume family,

who worked extensively for the second Earl of Warrington,

had an inspirational rise through society.

They were dealing with enormous amounts of money, comparatively speaking.

And because they had so much precious metal, they started loaning it out for interest

and a lot of clients used them as we use a bank today.

They would instruct them to pay other bills

and that starts modern banking.

Some of them, like the Willaume family, were particularly successful.

-Of course, yes.

-They had a very upmarket establishment,

that was basically a bank.

But they also would supply you with silverware from their own workshop.

David Willaume I, the father,

made so much money that he became a very big landowner.

He bought an estate in Bedfordshire - Tingrith -

and became part of the landed gentry.

The focus of silver craftsmanship was on dinner ware.

Fine dining held a pivotal role in society.

For it was around the dinner table that politics,

romance and business took place.

'About four fifths of domestic expenditure

'was, in effect, in the dining room, or for the dining room.'

Dinners were written about, they were reported in the newspapers,

dinners were written up in memoirs.

Dining was how people were judged at the top of society.

'Fine dinnerware by London-based master craftsmen

'was deemed a perfectly normal expression of wealth,

'and the examples are eye-watering.

'The 2nd Earl of Ashburnham

'commissioned this detailed centrepiece

'from Nicholas Sprimont, which showcased its maker's speciality,

'the lifelike modelling of animals and fruits.

'The Jewel Office ordered this elegant wine cooler,

'one of a pair by Paul Crespin,

'to decorate the 4th Earl of Chesterfield's Embassy at the Hague.

'The new Ambassador saw the dinner table as central

'to his diplomatic negotiations.

'The 6th Earl of Mountrath took prized possession

'of this Rococo Ewer by Paul de Lamerie.

'The Earl was one of de Lamerie's most important clients,

'and his patronage provided the opportunity for de Lamerie

'to stretch his imagination ever further.

'These magnificent pieces epitomise the great age of silver,

'but there's nothing like seeing collections of silverware

'in the great stately homes for which they were made.

'This is Dunham Massey, the Cheshire home, in the 18th century,

'of the 2nd Earl of Warrington.

'Between 1694 and 1758,

'he amassed an exceptionally large portfolio of silverware.

'And today, although the original collection's not intact,

'what remains still amounts to the largest group

'of early 18th century British plate in its original location.'

This silverware sums up an era. A metal and a man.

Let's take a quick overview of the sensational silver collection.

Over 1,000 individual items. 12 dozen silver plates,

this huge wine cistern, water fountain, bread basket.

The prettiest little silver egg cups. There's silver all over the house.

Silver for the chapel. Silver candlesticks to light the house.

And in the bedrooms, silver toilet surfaces.

And, for the man who had everything, silver chamber pots.

It's a wonderful thing. Silver, I'm serious, amazing.

The 2nd Earl of Warrington commissioned 14 of these.

Must have made going to the loo a very exquisite experience.

As well as a social expectation that fine houses would display silver,

there was another core reason why the 2nd Earl of Warrington

was such an avid collector.

That reason was the man himself.

'The house in which the young Earl grew up was in a state of disrepair.

'He had painful memories of his mother scrimping for money,

'and his father actually weeping over debt.'

When the 2nd Earl inherited in 1694,

he acquired not just a great family legacy -

I love his family crest with this pair of boars -

but also inherited tremendous debts.

This really stayed with him.

His upbringing gave the young Earl a determination

and a particular attitude towards money.

'He was determined to turn the fortunes of his estate around.'

In 1702, the Earl cleverly but miserably married for money.

His wife was Mary Oldbury, a daughter of a rich merchant.

But he loathed her so much, he actually wrote a treatise on divorce.

I'd love to show you a portrait of Mary, but one doesn't exist.

It seemed he never had her painted.

However, he used her money to rebuild the house and improve the estate.

'This ready money helped drive the 60-year investment in silver,

'proudly stamped with the family coat of arms.

'Warrington was making his mark.

'The man's passion clearly documented in a fanatical inventory

'called "The Particular of my Plate and its Weight."

'The National Trust's silver expert, James Rothwell,

'understands the Earl's unusually personal link with his silver.'

So here's a very detailed inventory of the silver in the house,

compiled by the Earl himself in, in rather loving detail.

I was going to say controlling, rather than loving. Very much so.

Each piece has a life history, doesn't it?

Its weight important because of the capital value of it,

but also because it was a way of identifying individual pieces.

You have the egg frame, the egg cup frame.

Oh, yes. Egg frame, yes...

Erm, scallop shells, bread baskets.

-There's ounces, and then this is...

-Ounces and pennyweights.

Seems obsessive, a bit like collecting train numbers.

There's pages and pages of this.

Some of the descriptions in the inventory have been scratched out.

Does that mean they've been sold, melted down...?

In some cases it does.

For instance, you have here, the table or board

to set the sweetmeat sauces on has been changed.

That means that it would have been sent

to be melted down for something more fashionable.

This is all written by him. Not by his steward, but by him.

By him personally. He didn't trust anybody else to do it.

Nothing is left to doubt in this document.

You know precisely what happens to everything.

'The Earl's silver was in the Baroque style,

'which gained popularity in Britain from the late 17th century.

'It was dramatic, grand and boldly sculptural.'

Indeed, in front of me, all is solid, lustrous silver.

Quite clearly, the days of debt were over.

'Such stunning silver was a financial investment of choice

'in the 18th century.'

A key point to understand

is that the constituent parts of silver in "wrought plate",

as it's called when it's made into objects,

is the same as the coinage.

So, this is your saved wealth, your capital.

And it's safe, as a result of being in your hands in silver objects.

If you ran out of money,

then you could send it to be melted down and become coinage again.

In times of national trouble, it could be brought in.

So in the Civil War, an awful lot of silver went.

Is there another magical element to it?

One thing that's obvious is that it's very shiny, so it's impressive.

So why was a conspicuous display of wealth so important?

Whatever position you had in society, you had to show it.

And that was a pre-requisite. You had to show it.

You were showing that you were both rich and cultivated

and up to the latest fashions, so you were at the height of society.

And you were ruling society.

'Silver was a reliable investment in the 18th century

'because its quality was assured.

'We can link the craftsman to the masterpiece because of hallmarks.

'The world's largest office for testing, or assaying, silver

'is in Birmingham. Here, I'll investigate the significance

'behind the tiny marks on all pieces of British silver.'

Hallmarking, really, is one of the oldest forms of consumer protection.

Essentially, even today, if you go into a jeweller's or silversmith's

and you want to buy a piece of precious metal,

it's a guarantee, as you buy that piece,

that what you're buying is what it says on the tin, essentially.

Hallmarking really began in 1300,

when a statute was passed by King Edward I,

who then made it happen in this country

that items of precious metal had to be assayed

and then hallmarked before they were allowed to be sold.

'There are four assay offices in the United Kingdom today,

'each with its own distinctive mark.

'London uses a leopard's head. Birmingham, an anchor.

'Sheffield's represented by a rose.

'And a castle is the stamp of Edinburgh.'

The hallmark itself has always told us about the quality

of the silver, the amount of silver, the precious metal.

But it also tells us

the person who brought it to be assayed can be either the maker

and they have their own maker's mark, or what we called a sponsor.

The date letter is no longer compulsory on silver,

which is a shame because from a historian's point of view,

it will make it very difficult

to date pieces as accurately as we can now.

You look at an item and instantly you have an information trail

in symbols that will tell you exactly the history of your object.

'Knowing that hallmarks can reveal

'not just when and where a piece was made,

'but also identify the silversmith who had it assayed,

'I'm keen to look afresh at the marks on the Dunham Massey silver.'

'I can read a tankard mark by James Schruder in 1743,

'with London's leopard mark.

'And this delightful bell...'

BELL RINGS

'..is by Peter Archambo, from 1738.'

BELL RINGS

'It's evident that ordering prestigious silver

'from leading craftsmen was one part of the equation.

'The actual ritual of dining off silver

'was also a huge social statement.

'In the 18th century, a style called "a la Francaise"

'dominated the tables of the rich and powerful.'

The fashionable way to eat was "a la Francaise,"

and that actually derived

from the great Medieval banqueting form of eating.

That was perfected in the court of Louis XIV, hence "a la Francaise."

Essentially, the whole table was a magnificent display

when you came into the room.

So there were already silver objects containing food on the table.

It wasn't brought to you at the table.

-You helped yourself?

-You helped yourself.

The gentleman would help himself

-and he would also help the lady to his side.

-Ah.

We have here terrines and meat dishes,

and you'd have vegetable dishes as well,

and salts because salt was a pretty...

You'll notice there's one per diner.

Yes, salt. Presumably, I can imagine, servants would, with a flourish...!

And there it is, the steam.

The silver in front of us is, in a sense,

a prelude to what's going on behind.

-The real theatre's over there on the buffet, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

It's about service to the table.

You have all the accoutrements that are required during the meal,

and then you have ancestral pieces.

You're showing off your antiquity.

'But the star attraction of the buffet

'was the silverware for the service of wine.

'A water fountain by Peter Archambo was decorated with the boars

'of the family coat of arms.

'The water would be drawn from the fountain to rinse the glasses

'over this Baroque cistern.

'And the wine itself was stored in a gargantuan cooler packed with ice,

'as both red and white wine were served chilled.

'All pieces were proudly decorated with the family coat of arms.'

So, the guests here would read all this, wouldn't they?

He tends to go for comparatively simple shapes,

so all the more emphasis is put onto the arms and so forth.

'Then the dessert course was the opportunity

'to show your credentials

'and indulge in more breathtakingly ornate silverware.

'This curious object, an Epergne,

'originated in the French court of Versailles in the 1690s.

'The Earl's Epergne is sadly missing,

'but the Victoria and Albert Museum has some delightful examples.'

Here we have a wonderful elaborate piece of silver and glass,

both sparkling materials,

intended to grace the dessert stage of the meal.

Hothouse fruit was just as expensive to produce

as wonderful Italian confectionary,

and to be able to put little apricots or grapes

or other delicacies on your table through the winter

was another index of wealth.

'English silversmith Thomas Pitts made this Epergne in 1764.

'They were his speciality.

'The Epergne was the triumphant climax of the dinner service.

'Enjoyed from every angle,

'the huge weight of silver

'intricately crafted into an exquisite centrepiece

'required the touch of a master craftsman.'

An Epergne was going to be the one object

that everybody looked at closely.

It's on the table probably throughout the dinner.

What we have here is a typical piece of Rococo silver.

It builds up, it uses floral elements.

The branches, as you can see, are wrapped with leaves.

Each of the little baskets

has a repeat floral motif around the border.

The piercing here is quite complicated.

The cutting through, which we see more often on bread baskets.

But here it is very pretty and gives a lightness to the whole thing,

so that it's springing off the table.

'The preparation of food was so important in the 18th century that,

'as well as copper, silver could be found below stairs too.'

Here at Dunham Massey,

we still have this splendid silver preserving basin.

It was used by the staff, because silver conducts heat brilliantly,

and also because of its anti-bacterial qualities.

It was very good to use in the preparation of food.

'But actually owning a little silver, perhaps some piece of cutlery,

'was becoming more achievable throughout society.'

In 1800, for example, many, many people would have silver spoons.

We're very familiar with the idea

that silver is a christening present,

and of course, that is what happened in former times.

A silver spoon was given to a child and that was personal property,

to be carried by that individual all through their childhood

and into their adult life, and then taken to the table

when a meal was prepared.

Goldsmiths travelled around the country.

If you wanted a little luxury, you didn't have to come to London.

The goldsmiths would come to the annual fairs in each region,

and the kind of novelty you could buy

would be a little travelling set like this.

A beaker and a knife and fork and spoon,

which you take apart for travelling.

This was a very smart present, perhaps for a young bride.

These are particularly decorative because they're gilded.

The silver has been covered

with a paste of powdered gold and mercury, and that's then been fired.

And there's a chemical reaction.

The mercury comes off as fumes,

and in fact, gilders notoriously died by 40

because the mercury ate their soft tissue.

But it produces a beautiful effect.

'Cutlery was a mere trifle for those at the top of society,

'like the 2nd Earl of Warrington.

'Their splendid houses had to reflect the latest tastes,

'and following silver fashions

'was a non-negotiable and persistent demand.'

In the 18th century,

as the British Empire and foreign trade expanded,

new, exotic commodities came from far and wide.

Tea from China, coffee from the Ottoman Empire.

And chocolate from Central and South America.

These were all true luxury items.

'But luckily enough for the silversmiths, an almost endless list

'of new items were required to house, display and dish up these goods.

'Teapots, hot water urns, sugar bowls, coffee pots, cream jugs,

'tea caddies, teaspoons.'

In the Earl's time, commissioning a portrait was a great expense,

and a lot of thought went into it.

In the 16th century, a man might like to be shown

in his best suit of armour to display his prowess and status.

A woman, bedecked in jewels.

But silver soon entered the language of portraiture.

Now, sitters liked to be shown

indulging the new expensive luxury of tea drinking,

with their silver set out on the table in front of them.

This, of course, displayed their taste, their wealth

and their familiarity with the new fashionable business of taking tea.

Tea was the principal drink that was had if you had anybody visiting you

at any time of day, essentially. Very much a luxury,

and you can see that in some of the objects.

These tea canisters which have locks in them

because it was such an expensive commodity.

By custom, the women of the household would preside over the ritual of tea.

Because the Earl's relationship with his wife was difficult,

I suppose things here were different.

In this house, Lord Warrington was on such bad terms with his wife,

it's very probable the Earl would have had to

perform the ceremony of tea himself.

That's absolutely right.

'On top of a great silver tea table by David Willaume the Younger

'sits the Earl's tea service,

'complete apart from two teapots by John Jacob.'

-We have these phantom teapots. Got to imagine teapots, two teapots.

-We do.

'The serving of tea was a very precise ceremony,

'starting with this tea canister by Isaac Liger.'

And it has a cap which acts as a measure, so that comes off.

-So it's a very precise ritual?

-It is.

-Yes.

And you would pour the tea out into the cap,

and then into our imaginary teapot.

You then put water in.

It would have been a maid who would have performed the task.

'Milk is dispensed from a silver Ewer by David Willaume the Younger.'

THEY LAUGH

That's more like it.

And then, the tea.

'Then sugar taken from a sparkling sugar box by John Liger.'

And sugar being also a very expensive commodity,

so the wealth you were showing by performing this ceremony...

-Of course. In front of one is a small fortune.

-Yes.

I mean, not, actually, not a small fortune, a significant fortune.

'All this talk of entertaining,

'but the one thing I want to do is experience dining from solid silver.'

Right, all feels very special, of course.

Erm, the objects are valuable,

and one, therefore, treats them with extra respect.

I mean, it creates a sense of ritual and theatre and specialness.

Does it affect the taste of things as well?

I think it does. Other thing, of course,

eating off a polished silver plate, I can see myself eat!

Bit disconcerting, never mind.

Mmm...

Delicious.

Also feels, of course, rather hygienic.

Silver has these qualities of being anti-bacterial, so it's clean.

Gets one's senses enflamed, and also, of course,

in terms of the beauty, one's senses are delighted artistically.

I recommend it.

'What's incredible about the British silver I've seen

'is the fact it exists at all.

'In the 18th and 19th centuries,

'people didn't have quite the same respect

'for antiquity or craftsmanship that we now have.

'Many of the pieces we see here are the survivors.

'So much plate was melted down to be born again in the latest fashions.'

'But the very wealthiest Britons had no need to melt plate at all.

'They could buy more.

'As the 18th century gave way to the 19th century,

'one family able to keep adding to its considerable silver collection

'was the Royal Family.

'The Prince Regent was a legendary example.

'Becoming Regent in 1811, then King George IV in 1820,

'his lavish taste and spending sprees knew no limits.'

The Prince created idiosyncratic buildings

such as the Royal Pavilion in Brighton.

He also commissioned four silver dinner services

from the Royal jewellers, Rundle, Bridge & Rundle

that cost him over £111,000.

That's around £3.5 million in today's money. Excess!

'Caricatures of the time show the Prince Regent's

'relentless love of fine dining.

'And in a cartoon of 1811,

'an audience playfully covet the Prince's extensive silverware.

'As the 19th century progressed, one great innovation

'provided the golden age of silver with a spectacular flourish.

'A new way of dining was introduced

'that became a catalyst for innovatory table pieces.

'The banqueting style of dining "a la Francaise" was losing favour.

'A new fashion called "dining a la Russe"

'would take the 19th century

'to headier heights of creative indulgence.

'I'm visiting Chatsworth House in Derbyshire to experience it.'

'This is the country seat of one of the wealthiest

'and most powerful families of the 18th and 19th centuries.

'The Devonshires.

'This sculpture gallery reveals their continuing patronage

'and collecting as a family.

'And what draws me here is the table in the great dining room,

'sparkling with silverware.

'It's set for a prestigious visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

'to the 6th Duke of Devonshire in December 1843.

'The "a la Russe" fashion really gripped the nation's imagination.

'It changed the way we dined and socialised.

'Indeed, "a la Russe" is still with us today.

'It's how most of us dine, particularly in restaurants.

'But what exactly is it?'

Dining "a la Francaise," all of your food was put on the table

in various terrines and platters and covered dishes.

All the diners would have helped themselves.

In dining "a la Russe," which is what we have here,

the individual diners have their food brought to them

by a footman, a bit like we have in a restaurant today.

The absence, then, of all of the pieces

in the middle of the table that would have been used to serve,

gets eaten up with this great wealth of display.

It's all about show, there's no practical function

other than that some of it provides lighting.

It's really just a sort of miniature sculpture gallery

running down the middle of the table.

And also, I observe, it becomes more of an individual affair,

cos individual wine coolers, even little glass receptacles

for cooling one's individual champagne glass, I suppose.

I mean, where did this fashion come from? Presumably from Russia.

Yes, dining "a la Russe," it comes from Russia.

It was the Russian Ambassador to the French court at the beginning

of the 19th century, he became Ambassador in 1808, and then,

as with so many things at that date, France sort of spread the fashion.

And presumably, it was regarded as fashionable but also more practical.

I mean, food would turn around more quickly?

Yes. I think the main, sort of, advantage of it

is that your food would be hot.

If you, sort of, the traditional "a la Francaise,"

the food would be sitting around for a very long time,

and it would go cold.

'The Duke commissioned much of this plate between 1813 and 1823,

'from English silversmiths Robert Garrard

'and Paul Storr, pictured here.'

'The silver could be easily interpreted

'by contemporary audiences. The family coat of arms is prominent,

'represented by stags which support the vase candelabra.

'And signs of hospitality, such as grapes, festoon the silverware.'

This dinner for Queen Victoria, the Duke would have wanted

to give her a really grand event. We know that the local newspapers

described the silver that ran down the centre of the table.

-So the silver stole the show?

-It did.

One paper wrote,

"The display on the table was splendid beyond description.

"Urns, vases, candelabra of the most elaborate workmanship,

"in the greatest profusion.

"The room is worthy to be the dining room of royalty." What a rave review.

'In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution

'inspired a frenzy of activity.

'Machines and factories were taking over our cities.

'Mass production would bring the price of silver down.

'Rail and steam power provided a distribution network

'all over the country.'

Cities were crammed with people looking for jobs and apprenticeships.

The silver trade was an attractive option

because it combined the benefits of machinery

with hand crafted workmanship.

'In the Machine Age, silverware became more widely available.

'Bit by bit, the middle classes were getting their hands

'on what had once been the preserve of the super rich.

'Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter is still a thriving hub

'for silversmiths, but I'm here to visit a factory frozen in time,

'to get a glimpse of what it would have been like to work here

'in the 19th century.

'Now, the dies lie still.

'The stamps are silent.

'And the people have vanished.

'This factory, the creation of Jenkin William Evans,

'reveals how the business of silver once operated.

Jenkin's' grandson Tony worked here till he retired in 2008,

'and sold this snapshot of 19th century silversmithing

'to English Heritage for preservation and restoration.'

Of course, the Jewellery Quarter would have been a thriving place then,

sending products out all over the Empire.

I heard people say that after the end of the working day,

the roads would be filled, almost like a football crowd.

There would have been thousands of people.

The work here was a team effort.

Everyone was working on maybe the same object. It went down the line.

Each product, as it went out the door,

was a product of the skill which each individual had put upon it.

It was a very prolific company, I imagine.

And prolific to, I suppose, to not mass-produce exactly,

you wanted to keep the prices down of the objects.

Silver has never been known as cheap,

but it certainly isn't in the same area as bespoke silverware.

This is silverware which anybody could buy.

Tell me about the young chaps, the apprentices.

What was their life like?

The apprentices would have started at the age of 14 or 15,

but the life would have been fairly hard.

They would have started their day in the simple way,

making the tea and watching the master craftsmen,

and bit by bit, being allowed to do more and more complex things.

And what about the girls? They had a role here, I imagine, women.

The tasks within the factory were basically divided

according to the strengths required.

The finer work, piercing work and so on,

the ladies' more deft fingers and better touch would come to plate.

'Barry Abbotts spent over 20 years at the Evans Factory.

'He'll demonstrate drop stamping for me on a piece of copper.'

-Hello.

-Hello.

-We're going to make something, aren't we?

-Yeah.

-Oh, copper?

-Wine label.

-Wine label.

-Yeah.

Well, I assume the object's going to be stamped.

Can you talk me through the process?

Right, basically, what I do, I've got a blank, a copper blank.

Put it on the die. So I'll give it a tap.

-Oh!

-Then a tough blow.

-Watch your fingers. Ahh...

-Ooh!

-Which...

-Gosh, it's quite violent, isn't it?

-Yeah.

So that's the label.

-That's right.

-Gosh, you could make a lot of those in a day, I suppose.

Yes, you could make about 500, 600.

You have to have your wits about you. After lunch down the pub,

you couldn't work this, could you?

You'd get your finger stamped into a wine label!

-You did get used to 'em.

-You've got your fingers, have you?

-Yes, yes, all of them.

-Well done.

But you can imagine, I mean, this is just the one hammer going.

The noise, of course, that's the thing. And you're OK?

Yeah, yeah, fine, fine. You know, you just get used to 'em.

Well, thank you very much for my wine label.

-That's fine.

-I'll treasure it.

-OK, then. Bye, then.

'The silver trade was a network, a huge network,

'and Evans was a wholesaler supplying goods to leading manufacturers.

'Curiously, it didn't have its own maker's mark.'

Tell me a little bit how the industry worked.

There were distinct layers to the trade.

You'd both have the quality or county jewellers,

if you like, being the retailers,

and they were being supplied by manufacturing silversmiths.

They might be very large firms, like Elkingtons,

or Walker & Hall, Mappin & Webb.

We were one step below that, where they could just buy in from us,

but they would buy things as components

-and then finish them off in their own factory.

-Right.

And when they went through to be hallmarked, of course,

they would bear their hallmark, and so Evans never existed.

Quite deliberately, Jenkin never registered a hallmark.

He wouldn't want to destroy any confidence that we would stay

at that level, cos potentially we could have undercut customers.

'What this 19th century factory reveals

'is the impact of the Industrial Revolution on silver production.

'Silver moved from an elitist luxury

'that the likes of the Earl of Warrington

'or Duke of Devonshire could afford

'to something attainable for all of us.'

Ultimately, the 19th century saw a huge rise

in the consumption of middle class silver, but it was,

of course, a class conscious age, and no ordinary person would ever dream

of attempting to emulate our Earl, the Prince Regent or Queen Victoria.

You can see a completely different range of products

in the 19th century, being produced and consumed by the middle classes,

because, of course, in a middle class household, you didn't have

a large number of servants, and managing silver,

managing a silver cupboard, plate cupboard, took a lot of care.

Household manuals laid out the rules most clearly

for the middle class ownership of silver.

For example, we read,

"Families who cannot afford plate should economise till they can obtain

"at least four or five cover dishes, a sufficient quantity of forks

"and two sauce boats of silver, made perfectly plain for everyday use.

"The service or plate must depend on the fortune."

Well, that makes things absolutely clear.

The manufacturers fed that hunger to be acceptable,

to know what you should do, by inventing objects

that middle class families felt they needed to have.

And one prime example of that is, of course, fish knives and forks.

Fish knives and forks proliferated in designs because, of course,

you can decorate the blade in all sorts of ways.

You can create fishy motifs and so on, you can gild the blade.

You can have a handle which might be,

as this one is, of mother of pearl.

And the silver gives it all class.

Fish knives and forks absolutely did not penetrate the upper classes,

and indeed still feel uneasy or mock the middle classes

for the pretension of eating fish with a particular tool.

'What the middle classes now had,

'the working classes also wanted on their dining tables.

'And new technologies would send the price of silverware plummeting.

'It had started with the invention of Sheffield plate,

'which looked like solid silver,

'when it was, in fact, a layer of silver on top of copper.

'But this was soon usurped by electroplating.

Patented in the 1840s

and championed by businessman George Richard Elkington.

'Now anything, however big or small,

'could be covered with a layer of tantalising silver,

'and look almost as good as the real thing.'

Silver had moved with the times,

from the favoured material for upper class luxury items

made by the finest craftsmen, to popular status symbols

for every man, from dining "a la Francaise," to dining "a la Russe."

And if the rise of silver had been dramatic, so was its fall,

and that fall was fast.

'Today, most people no longer have silver on their dining tables.

'So what happened to silver the moment we could all afford it?'

You could argue that it was electric light which essentially drove silver

from its pre-eminent place, because candles have the wonderful effect

of bringing out the ripples in silver, bringing out the handiwork.

Electric light is a flat light,

and so there's no longer that mystery and that flattering glow.

Sheffield plate, initially,

and then electroplating in the mid-19th century,

brought down the cost but also reduced silver's status.

So it was no longer smart.

If your butcher, baker, candlestick maker

could have what appeared to be silver on the table,

why would grand families think it was part of their status any more?

'New objects of desire began to tempt the social elite.'

I think ceramics and glass

were great competitors for silver in the 19th century.

They were coming up with colourful styles,

so you would get different patterns.

I think it was about colour at this period.

'And silver couldn't really compete with cheaper modern materials.'

Today, of course, the easy availability

of cutlery in stainless steel

has, for the most part, replaced the use of silver flatware.

'As I return to Dunham Massey,

'home of the 2nd Earl of Warrington's silver collection,

'it's clear that a huge part of the metal's fall from favour

'was the change in Britain's class society.'

In the early 20th century, many country houses like this

struggled to afford the servants needed to keep them running smoothly.

Silver needs a lot of work to keep clean.

It's an act of love or a job you're paid to do.

Sadly, many country houses simply couldn't afford to keep their silver.

'Today, all these fine houses, museums and factories

'reveal an obsession with a precious metal

'that was once a mainstay of British society.'

Fortunately, collectors like the 2nd Earl of Warrington

allow us a tantalising glimpse into the shimmering world of silver.

The stuff of dreams.

A love affair that utterly gripped the British for centuries.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd