Sheffield plate

How to read it

Britannica credits the technique to Thomas Boulsover, a Sheffield cutler, who found about 1742 that silver and copper fused together could be worked as one metal. An ingot of copper was covered top and bottom with sheets of silver and fired; when the silver began to melt, the ingot was cooled and rolled into sheet, and the edges of finished pieces were rolled over to hide the copper that showed where the sheet was cut. The V&A’s description is silver-plated copper formed as a single ingot before shaping, and it notes that the result could convincingly imitate the surface of solid silver, relatively cheaply. Boulsover made buttons; his former apprentice Joseph Hancock applied the process to other wares, and from 1762 Matthew Boulton made it at Soho in Birmingham, with workshops in London, Nottingham and Dublin following (Britannica).

Also searched as: fused plate, old sheffield plate, sheffield england silver plate, sheffield plate, sheffield silver.

When it was invented

The year depends on the source. The V&A and Britannica give 1742, the Silver Society about 1743, and Howard Okie (1928) 1743. Boulsover’s obituary in the Derby Mercury of 1788, quoted by Arthur Hayden in 1908, puts it about 1750, when he was asked to repair a knife haft made of silver and copper. Okie says domestic pieces were not made in any quantity until about 1760.

When it ended

After 1830 German silver often replaced copper as the base metal, and with electroplating in the 1840s production declined; by the 1870s it had all but ceased (Britannica). The V&A dates its replacement by electroplate to the 1840s. The State Library of Victoria’s guide adds that fused plate went on being used for up to a hundred years more for articles that took heavy wear, most commonly uniform buttons and tankards.

Marks on Sheffield plate

Many pieces have none. Okie writes that the very finest Old Sheffield plate is entirely unmarked, and the Silver Society says neither Sheffield plate nor electroplate carries silver marks. Hayden explains why: the 1773 Act that set up assay offices at Sheffield and Birmingham carried penalties that put an end to platers marking their wares, and an Act of 1784 (24 George III, c. 20) then allowed platers within a hundred miles of Sheffield to strike their surname or firm’s name with a device, so long as the device did not copy any assay office mark. Sheffield Assay Office’s own history says that after 1784 it kept a register of makers’ marks on plated wares made within a hundred miles, which fell into disuse from 1836. Okie counts fifty-five Birmingham and nineteen Sheffield firms who registered marks between 1808 and 1836, and none after. The State Library of Victoria’s guide tells it differently: London silversmiths filed an injunction in 1773, and the platers were allowed to resume marking the following year.

Old marks on newer plate

Okie notes that some makers’ marks from fused plate went on being used on electroplate after the firm changed its process. His example is the crossed arrows of T. & J. Creswick, used in his day by their successors Hutton & Company on electroplate.

Sheffield plate or Sheffield silver?

Hayden thought the name a misnomer. Strictly, he wrote, Sheffield plate is solid silver assayed at the Sheffield Assay Office since 1773, with the crown as its town mark, and the fused ware is “Sheffield plated ware”, a copy of real plate. A hallmark from the Sheffield office, a crown on older silver and a rose today, is described on the Sheffield rose page; it marks tested solid silver, not plate.

What the name covers now

About thirty years after fused plate stopped being made, Britannica says, makers began reproducing its designs by electroplating on copper. In 1911 the Sheffield Cutlers’ Company established in the British courts that the term Sheffield plate could be applied only to articles made by fusion. The State Library of Victoria notes that many designs were reproduced in electroplate, and that those from the early 1900s seldom have a maker’s mark, like the originals.