please help me identify

[clivethejive]

Hello all, can anyone please help me identify exactly what this spoon is, and what it may have been used for.?
The pictures aren't the best but the city stamp seems to be a leopard, but I’ve never seen one like this before and can’t find it in any hallmark book.
It’s a bit like the one they have on this site as a banner, but that one as a crown on it. It also as a number seven stamp on it, could this be that it is number seven in a set of spoons?
(admin edit - see Posting Requirements)
Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks for looking at my posting




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[larkfield]

Hi
I would put this down as London 1835, and I think its a pretty horrible leopards head. in which case the sponsor would be Benjamin Smith 11.
I would call it as a salt spoon.
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[dognose]

Hi,

Welcome to the Forum.

This Leopard's Head, dubbing by some as the 'grinning monkey' was the work of the engraver John Smith. Smith was employed by the Goldsmiths Company from 1815-1839. His work was below the standard expected by the Company, and he was known to have failing eyesight. He also made other errors, most famously in 1833. If you look at any table of date marks for that year, you will notice an upper case 'S' was used in the sequence of lower case letters. Smith handed over the punches on the day that the new Wardens took over, and although the mistake was noticed straight away, there was no time to do anything about it.

I suspect John Smith was a well-liked character, for despite the quality of his work, following the debacle of 1833, he still managed to cling on to his job until 1839. At that date John Smith and William Wyon, the engraver at the Royal Mint, were both commisioned to make sample punches of the Duty Mark. The comparison showed Wyon's work to be far superior and he was appointed as Engraver to the Company, a position he held until his death in 1851. John Smith was reported to have been awarded a generous pension.

The number '7' looks to me to be a journeyman's mark.
See 'Tally Mark' at: http://www.925-1000.com/silverglossary5.html

Trev.
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[buckler]

Strange how the error on upper case "S" rather than lower case "s" occured in 1833, only two cvcles (forty years) after John Pingo's similar blunder in 1793. In Pingo's case he was made to alter the "S" of 1793/4 into a cross barred "S" and the Company made the Engraver take an oath each year " for the due execution of his work" . Obviously had been forgotten by 1833 !
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[clivethejive]

Thank you for all the info it as been very helpful.
I do have two of these spoons.
Would you know if they were made as a pair? Or could they have been made up in to a pair at a later date?
As they do have the same monogram on them.
many thanks again Clive



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[MCB]

Hello,

The second spoon was probably made by James Beebe and put to assay in 1842-3. As the first spoon is by another maker they aren't a pair although they were, from the engraving, once owned by the same person.
Benjamin Smith II is said in John Culme's London Directory (page424) to have been in his last illness in 1822 and, although it hasn't been possible to establish his actual year of death, it seems unlikely he would have put the first spoon to assay in 1835. A more likely candidate for making the item would be Benoni Stephens (Grimwade 232).

Mike
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[clivethejive]

A BIG Thanks guys, that is most helpful.
Clive.
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