London silver hallmarks 1751

[niceguy1]

I would highly appreciate your thoughts on this London Silver piece.

From the hallmarks it seems to be 1751 & the makers initials JW or TW.
The closest I can find is Thomas Whipham or Thomas Wallis II But he only registered in 1778.

I don’t have the piece to hand & for other reasons I can’t show the whole piece but it’s a religious ceremonial piece & bears a inscription dated 1752 (if genuine..).

[niceguy1]

I would also like to ask your opinion on the fact that the makers mark is upside down in relation to the other hallmarks. Is that ok for that period or it should cast doubts on the object’s authenticity.

[buckler]

First of all, to put your mind at rest, the marks looks absolutely right. All pieces sent was assay were required to be stamped by the sponsor before being submitted for assay . They were then tested by the Assay Office, and if up to standard, hallmarked . If, in the rush to get work out , an assayer failed to realise he was stamping upside down to the sponsors mark, that's life ! The original maker/sponsor may well have put his mark on upside down ! He was also probably under pressure.
That would not worry me.

The Lion Passant appears to be a London mark of the 1740-1756 period . Caveat - Newcastle also used that form of lion but that date letter does not exist in Newcastle - so the one suspect from Newcastle with a similar mark , Thomas Watson can be ruled out . He's too late anyhow

So the "q" for 1751/52 seems right for only London. The punches for the date letter and the Leopart head are also correct for that date
.
Thomas Wallis I of London may have had an unrecorded mark similar to Wallis II in the lost register, but I doubt it

So I can offer only one possible other suspect

Thomas Wigan of Bristol, mark entered at London in 1763 . Too late I hear cry ?

Well he was certainly working in Bristol in 1755 when he and his wife Sarah took William Brimblecombe apprentice.
So Wigan was established during the 1740 -1756 period.
My speculation is that Thomas Wigan also had a mark in the London Smallworkers Register of 1739 -1758 , and this is his work

Hopefully you can advise us if the church to which this belongs might be well to the west of London and I think we may be home !

[buckler]

Further to my above post , I forgot to mention that The London Smallworkers Register of 1739 -1758 is one of the two London Lost Registers of the eighteenth century , and there is therefore no surviving record of the marks registered in them .
I must also apologise for the sloppy proof reading of the text .... it's been a long day and we're up early tomorrow as well!

[niceguy1]

HI BUCKLER

This object is many miles away from West London & it’s actually what’s called a Ner Tamid/Eternal Light into which a candle would have been placed & hung from the ceiling in front of the Holy Ark in the Synagogue so I’m afraid that rules out your Church…

I have now received permission to put up pics of the whole object. The Hebrew inscription dates to 1752. I asked a judaica expert friend & he felt that while it seems to be a period inscription the quality isn’t good enough compared to similar London known works. I think that isn’t much of a issue as there were any number of Provincial or even Colonial synagogues at the time & most, if not all used at least some English ceremonial silver objects.

Now as to the hallmarks, that friend asked a English silver expert & he felt that this started out life as a round cover, perhaps a chalice cover & was later reworked to it’s current form & therefore the hallmarks seem ‘stretched’.

What are you experts thoughts on that?

[buckler]

Thanks for the pictures.

I was not referring to West London, but to a place to well to the west of London !
The Bristol , Exeter and Bath area, but did not want to embarrass you by asking you to reveal location.

If originally entended for use in a synagogue , and made for, or in, London , they would have commissioned a Jewish silversmith - in the mid 18th century there were several in London . But not in the provences , which rather supports my theory of the West County smith, Thomas Wigan. Not many Jewish silversmiths to be found in Bristol in 1752 , but a fair number of Jews . It could have converted from a secular object at any time , or the inscription added by a local Jewish jeweller or even pawnbroker . Where-ever it is now, these things have often travelled and were altered in their lifetimes. and often altered by people not very skilled.
But the marks are right. Date fits, my money is still on Thomas Wigan!

[silvermakersmarks]

This matches the 1739 mark of Thomas Whipham (Grimwade #2974) and is also very similar to one of Grimwade's "Unregistered Marks", #3847, seen on a 1755 flagon and attributed to "?Thos. Whipham".

Whipham was in a couple of partnerships, with William Williams from 1740 to 1746 and Charles Wright from 1757. I have noted this mark with hallmark dates between 1747 and 1758 so assume he reverted to using it while working by himself.

Phil

[buckler]

This gets more interesting. Certainly the Grimwade mark no 2974 is the best match, the incursions at the base being distinctive . He was certainly in partnership with William Williams from 1740 . He died, according to Grimwade p.770', in 1756 and it was his son Thomas Whipham II who entered the partnership mark with Charles Wright in late October 1757. After a curious pause for about a year .
Whether the partnership with Williams survived until 1756 is unknown, although from what little information we have it seems to have been quite a loose arrangement. Which as Grimwade remarks was not unusual. I would not treat the information from Heal that this partnership ceased in 1746 as definitive - his information on dates only records what he found from trade cards and directories and this can mislead .
The 1755 TW mark on the mug ( Grimwade 3847) , does not show the bottom incursions , although this could be a penmanship error by Jackson

So I think we should now consider two possibles, Thomas Whipham as the strongest contender , if he was sponsoring marks separate to the partnership in 1751 as seems likely

Or Thomas Wigan of Bristol if he had a mark in the lost Smallworkers Register