Description:
Fused or Sheffield silver-plated oval cake basket (unmarked) with a movable loop handle, made of three sizes of twisted solid plated wire (introduced around 1768 and improved in 1780) with openwork sides and a solid oval base. During the early years of the fused plate industry from 1750-1770, makers used devices of their own as marks, some of which looked deceptively like silver marks, especially when marked three or four times in a row and then partially obliterated. The Act of 1773 established an assay office for silver in Sheffield, and provided that no article in which silver was used, if it were not solid silver, could bear a device resembling a mark on silver. In 1784, a further act decreed that the platers could register a device, but it was not to suggest a silver mark; however platers were not compelled to use marks and did not always comply.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+79.008 |
