Part 2

Precious metal might come into the silversmith's hands in any of three forms. One was bullion, bars of the virgin metal fresh from the mines and refineries of Mexico or Peru. Another was in the form of minted coins of various countries. The third consisted of silver or gold articles already wrought, but available for one reason or another to be melted down and reworked.

Perhaps in the seventeenth century a certain amount of bullion reached the English colonies from the Spanish Main in pirate ships. But there is no reason to suppose that this flow continued in the eighteenth century--and certainly not into Virginia. Governor Spotswood's expedition in 1718 had returned with Blackbeard's head swinging from a bowsprit and his followers in irons, most of them to be hanged afterward at Williamsburg.

Of course, pirates would as soon have coin as bullion, and pirate ships sometimes found haven in colonial ports, especially in those where no official inquired how poor sailor men suddenly acquired such great wealth. Some said that the colonial officials of North Carolina, New England, New York, and even Pennsylvania could be encouraged to look the other way on such occasions. At any rate, a sizable amount of silver coin entered the colonies in this fashion, at least in the seventeenth century.

Little of this lucre came directly into Virginia, but for other reasons than the attitude of the governors. The rural colonies of the South could offer neither the concealing refuge of large cities nor the lusty recreation that such cities in the middle and northern colonies promised to pleasure-hungry sailors.

In the eighteenth century, however, some coins from France, Spain, Portugal, Arabia, Mexico, and Peru did arrive and circulate in Virginia--pieces of eight, doubloons, pistoles, pistareens, crusadoes, and "dog dollars." The last, thought to be Dutch in origin, were so called from the crude representation of a lion on one face. Curiously, there were few British crowns, half-crowns, or shillings.

Despite this variety, coined money was by no means plentiful in the colonies in the eighteenth century. The scarcity of specie, in fact, was one of the strongest colonial arguments against the stamp tax in 1765. Nevertheless, coins of known weight and fineness provided the colonial silversmith with a fairly reliable source of raw material.

The third possible source--plate to be melted down and reworked--was less certain as to quantity but of trustworthy quality. Customers who wanted articles of silver made in the newest fashion often had to provide the smith with raw material--usually an equal weight of plate in the older style. If the old pieces had been wrought in England the mark either of a lion passant or the seated figure of Britannia attested to the fineness of the metal used.

But this source was of little help to the smiths of Williamsburg. Although Virginia probably contained as much concentrated wealth and as much plate as any other colony, the Virginians who held most of it leaned toward England in heart and pocketbook. If they wanted their silver refashioned, where more logical to have it done than in London--where fashions were made and where the pieces had been wrought in the first place.

_LEARNING TO BE A SILVERSMITH_

No one earned the right to be a master craftsman in silver--or a master of any other craft--in the eighteenth century without serving a long and thorough apprenticeship.

A boy of the working class in England was usually launched on his life's career by the time he was 14, and sometimes when he was only 10 or 12. The class of society into which he happened to be born and his father's vocation usually determined the road he would take. The oldest son almost automatically followed the father's trade and inherited his tools and shop, if he had one.

The same custom prevailed in the English colonies, including Virginia, but in modified form. Here the freedom of movement encouraged by the beckoning frontier of opportunity, and especially of cheap land, broke down many social and economic barriers. A man of one class could more easily climb into the class above or aspire to have his son do so. Even the long-standing apprenticeship system suffered. Not every man who arrived in the colony, or moved to its western reaches and set up shop as a master craftsman, had actually earned the ancient right to employ that title.

But by and large, colonial boys became colonial craftsmen only by completing an arduous apprenticeship period of seven years--more or less. During this time they learned the "art and mysterie" of the craft and gained skill in using its tools. At the age of 21 they became "journeymen" for an additional period until they acquired enough capital to set up in business for themselves.

Unlike the countries of Europe, the colonies in America did not have uniform laws regulating every aspect of the apprenticeship system. Some colonies had no legal regulations at all, some limited the effect of controls to specified trades or to certain aspects of apprenticeship, and some had laws that were honored in the breach more than in the observance. In sum, the colonies generally did not follow the European example of employing the authority of government to insure high standards of training and practice in the trades and crafts.

The traditions of apprenticeship, however, survived the ocean crossing somewhat better than the legal sanctions. Law or no law, the required seven-year minimum for apprenticeship in England was also customary in America. This seems to have been especially true of such highly skilled crafts as silversmithing, although wide variations appeared in the practice of other crafts.

Let's assume that young John Goodkin of Williamsburg, age 13, must be apprenticed out to learn a trade. Apprenticeship will provide the boy with an assured future livelihood, and at the same time relieve his father of the burden of supporting him. The master craftsman who accepts young Johnny as apprentice will not only teach him the trade but also provide him with board, lodging, clothing, and an occasional shilling (but no wages) for the full period of his apprenticeship. He will also teach Johnny, or see that he learns, a smattering of the three R's. In return the master will gain the services of--he hopes--a willing and receptive helper for seven years at minimum cost to himself.

The terms of apprenticeship were sufficiently standardized and frequently enough resorted to that printed forms were customarily used, with blank spaces for names and dates to be inserted. One copied by hand in the York County Deed book of 1762 reads as follows:

"This Indenture Witnesseth that John Webb an Orphan hath put himself ... apprentice to William Phillips of Williamsburg Bricklayer to learn his Art, Trade and Mystery; and ... to serve the said William Phillips from the day of the date hereof for ... five Years next ensuing during all which Term, the said Apprentice, his said Master faithfully shall serve, his Secrets keep, his lawful commands at all Times readily obey; He shall do no damage to his said Master, nor see it to be done by others, without giving Notice thereof to his said Master. He shall not waste his said Master's Goods nor lend them unlawfully to any. He shall not committ Fornication, nor contract Matrimony within the said Term. At Cards, Dice or any other unlawful Game he shall not play whereby his said Master may have damage. With his own Goods, nor the Goods of others without Licence from his Master, he shall not buy nor sell. He shall not absent himself day or night from his said Master's Service, without his Leave, nor haunt Alehouses, Taverns, or Play Houses, but in all Things behave himself as a faithful Apprentice ought to do during the said Term. And the said Master shall use the utmost of his Endeavours to teach, or cause to be taught or instructed the said Apprentice in the Trade or Mystery of a Bricklayer and procure or provide for him sufficient Meat Drink; Cloaths, Washing and Lodging fitting for an Apprentice...."

Johnny Goodkin of Williamsburg may himself want to be an explorer and trapper in Virginia's endless western territories. Or, like young Ben Franklin, he may want to go to sea. But it is his father who makes the decision. And more often than not the father's own decision is made for him by whatever openings for apprentices exist at the moment.

In Johnny's case the decision is easily reached: Mrs. Goodkin's cousin is a silversmith in Williamsburg and agrees to accept the boy as apprentice. Thus Johnny can look forward to a thoroughly respectable career. He may never rise to the social heights attained by Anthony Singleton; in fact he is unlikely to. But he may make himself so well respected by his fellow citizens as to be chosen by them a member of the city's Common Council. That honor was bestowed on James Geddy, Jr., in 1767.

As an apprentice to a silversmith, what will Johnny do? Probably he will arise very early in the morning and do household chores like any son of the family. One of his duties in the shop will doubtless be to light the fire in the forge. If necessary he will replenish the supply of charcoal, perhaps by fetching a sack from a bakery. The baker produces charcoal as an incidental by-product in the course of heating his ovens.

In addition, the young apprentice serves as errand boy, delivering finished goods, collecting bills, and carrying supplies. He also brings cakes and ale for the daily interlude that corresponded to the coffee break of today.

_TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES OF THE COLONIAL SILVERSMITH_

From the founding of Jamestown to the time of the Revolution some 300 silversmiths practiced in the three cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia alone. Another 200 worked in the smaller centers of New England and the middle colonies and in such southern places as Charleston, Annapolis, and Williamsburg. Unfortunately, if any of these 500 colonial silversmiths left a written account of his shop practices and methods of work, it has not been found.

Accordingly, our knowledge of the ways in which colonial smiths worked is derived from other sources. Most of it comes from a few technical handbooks and illustrated encyclopedias published in Europe at about the same time. Inasmuch as many colonial silversmiths gained their knowledge of the craft and of its standards of good practice as apprentices in the old country, it is probable that silversmithing practices in America were similar.

Not identical, though. The environment of the new country altered in some manner or to some degree almost every single attitude, habit, and craft practice. For example, in eighteenth-century England the silversmith whose shop was located within the purview of an assay office could sell the articles he made (with certain exceptions) only after the pieces had been assayed and stamped with the appropriate hallmarks, including one denoting the fineness of the metal. Since the colonies had neither assay offices nor regulations governing the work of silversmiths, each smith was responsible for the quality of his own work.

Because most re-used plate came originally from England and because coins were generally minted at or near sterling fineness (925/1000ths fine, or 92.5% pure silver, the rest of the alloy being copper), most American silversmiths presumably turned out work that was not too far from sterling purity. They could not afford to slip much below that level, after all, since they competed for favor and sales with the much esteemed plate imported from England. In many advertisements in the colonial press, smiths explicitly warranted their work to be of sterling quality. However, among the pieces of early American silver that have actually been assayed in recent years, only a portion have met the test; quite a number have not.

While American smiths no doubt resented the general preference of their customers for articles of English manufacture, they could not overlook the fact that English fashions in design dominated colonial life. Accordingly, silver of colonial make imitated the London styles in plate, being usually some years behind them.

But the American designers were neither unimaginative nor slavish imitators. Their designs modified the English originals rather freely--usually in the direction of simplicity and utility. American silver, dispensing with the heavy ornamentation for ornament's sake that often characterized the work of London silversmiths, tended to be substantial, serviceable, and vigorous in form, befitting the environment in which it was to be used.

Acquiring a complete set of Silversmith tools, or at least a reasonably adequate set, must have been something of a task in itself. When John Coney, a leading Boston silversmith, died in 1722 at the age of 67, the inventory of his goods reflected his many years at the craft. Among the articles listed were 116 hammers, 127 nests of crucibles, 80 anvils of different shapes and sizes (some called "stakes" and "teasts"), and unnumbered punches; plus chisels, swages, stamps, vises, files, and an almost endless variety of other tools.

John Burt, another Boston silversmith of the eighteenth century, got along with only 40 hammers, 15 pairs of tongs and pliers, 37 "bottom stakes," 155 punches, and other tools in like sparsity. A glance at the illustration on pages 27 and 28 from Diderot's _Encyclopedia_ (published in France, 1751-1772) indicates the infinite diversity of anvils that would be needed to produce every possible shape and size of hollow ware.

Even with all these tools--plus forge, ingot molds, drawing bench, binding wire, and many other essentials of the craft--the silversmith was limited to six basic methods of working silver. These were casting, forging, raising, hollowing, seaming, and creasing--the principal methods still employed by hand craftsmen today.

But forging, raising, hollowing, and creasing are all hammering processes, though they differ significantly in the manipulation of the metal under the hammer. In essence, thus, there are only three techniques of forming silver into an article of desired shape: casting the molten metal in a properly shaped mold; hammering an ingot into the shape desired; and building the desired shape from smaller pieces soldered together. Wire produced on the drawing bench might be one of these smaller elements. Filing is considered to be a finishing rather than a forming process.

These forming and working processes, as they would have been used by an eighteenth-century silversmith, will be described in more detail in a moment. But the smith, before he could do any work, had to acquire a supply of refined metal, probably from his customers. He then charged them only for his services in fashioning the new pieces, either a set amount for the type and size of article or a fixed fee per ounce of silver in the finished article.

Early in the Revolution, for example, General George Washington ordered a set of 12 silver "camp cups" from the Philadelphia Silversmith Edmond Milne. He supplied Milne with "16 silv^r Doll^s" to make the cups out of. Possibly these were Portuguese or Brazilian crusadoes or "cross dollars." As it turned out, there were 1¾ ounces more silver in the 16 dollars than Milne needed for the 12 cups. He retained the excess for his own use and credited its value against his charge for workmanship.

Coins went directly into the smith's "black lead" or graphite crucible. Old plate had to be broken up first into pieces of suitable size. Then the crucible was set down into--not on--the charcoal fire in the forge. Charcoal on top of the melting silver kept it from absorbing too much oxygen.

Pure silver is a highly ductile and malleable metal with the relatively low melting point of 1761 degrees Fahrenheit. Sterling silver melts at an even lower temperature, so only 15 or 20 minutes in the forge, with constant use of the bellows, would be enough to melt the crucible's charge. Most impurities in the metal would be sopped up by the porous graphite of the crucible itself. The molten metal was then poured out into a two-piece cast iron ingot mold or into an open mold called a "skillet." In either case, the cooling metal released any oxygen it might have absorbed in the form of spitting bubbles that left the surface of the ingot pitted with tiny holes.

If the piece of work to be made was a small ornament, it would be cast directly in a sand mold formed by the smith around a pattern of his own making. The acorn-like finials atop teapots or on the covers of tankards were normally made by casting, often a dozen at a time.

Perhaps, however, some customer ordered a simple, straight-sided silver cup, too large to be cast. Our smith could have made it by any one of three methods and the result would be the same in size, shape, weight, and appearance. Generally only another silversmith could hope to tell which was made by which process: forging, raising, or seaming.

To _forge_ such a cup the silversmith would have taken a billet of silver perhaps 3/16 inches thick and from it cut a disk of the same diameter as the lip of the finished cup. Then by careful and repeated hammer blows, using shaped anvils of the proper size and curvature, he would pound the metal into the form he required.

To _raise_ a cup, the smith would start with silver in the form of a flat sheet as thick (or thin) as he wanted the cup to be. He would have made the sheet himself, of course, by beating an ingot to the required thinness. From the sheet he would cut a disk whose diameter equalled the average diameter plus the average height of the finished cup. By carefully hammering the silver just beyond the edge of the anvil, he would force the metal around the outer part of the disk to rise and "shrink" until the cup was shaped.

To make a _seamed_ cup the smith would again use thin sheet, cutting from it a small round piece for the bottom of the cup and a slightly curved oblong piece to form its side. He would roll the latter into a somewhat cone-shaped cylinder and solder together the edges. Then he would solder the small disk into the lower end of the cylinder so that the cup was formed. This was by far the quickest and easiest method of making hollow ware. The silversmith's solder is itself composed predominantly of silver.

Whatever method the smith used to form the cup, he would finish it by a process known as planishing. In this procedure the small irregularities in the surface of the piece are carefully hammered smooth by repeated, deft blows of a flat, polished hammer. The face of the planishing anvil is likewise polished to mirror-like smoothness. After planishing would come the filing off of burrs in crevices of the design, and then an all-over polishing with pumice, tripoli, and rouge. At this point the piece would have been ready for surface ornamentation--by engraving, chasing, or repoussé.

Engraving means the cutting of a design into the surface of the work; some metal is removed in the process. Chasing is the impression of a design on the surface by the use of appropriately shaped punches. Repoussé consists of raising a design, somewhat like bas relief, by hammering from the back or inside of the work. In the second and third techniques the metal is displaced but not removed.

Stamping was normally used only in the forming of such small articles as the bowls of teaspoons. In this procedure a piece of silver was forged to the desired thickness and outline, and placed between a hollowed-out lower die and a rounded upper one. When the smith forced the two dies together by a blow of his heaviest hammer, the bowl of the spoon was formed. By filing, planishing, and polishing--and possibly some engraving--the one-piece spoon was quickly finished.

A soup ladle, having a much larger and deeper bowl, would have been formed by the raising process, with the handle made as a separate piece and soldered to the bowl. In fact, only the simplest articles and the smallest ones could be formed by one process alone. The accomplished colonial silversmith had to be able not only to refine and assay his own silver, but to work it up in any combination of techniques that the design made most appropriate.

As an example, the body and spout of a teapot might each have been formed by the seaming process, the base by forging, the top by raising, the finial by casting, and parts of the hinges by drawing. Then all the parts would have been soldered together and the piece planished, polished, and finished off with engraved, chased, or repoussé decoration--or a combination of these. Finally, the smith would have attached a wooden handle, which he might have obtained from a cabinetmaker--or made himself.

Among the silversmith's final procedures would have been the stamping of his mark, his initials, or his name on the piece. This practice of identifying the maker of an article of gold or silver ware is of long standing, though perhaps not so ancient as the custom by which a painter or sculptor signs his work.

Since the year 1300 the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths of the City of London has been charged by the British government with assaying gold and silver wares and coins, and certifying that the metals are of required fineness. Throughout most of this long period the hallmarking of English silver articles has retained a basic continuity of tradition. Disregarding certain modifications and accretions (some noted in the caption above), every piece of sterling silver made in England since 1544 has borne four marks stamped on the back, bottom, or side.