Silverware and Plate Industry

While reading the text we shall return to Sheffield - the biggest centre of British metallurgy.

The story of silverware and the story of the highly-prized Old Sheffield plate are inextricably linked. Two hundred and fifty years ago cutlery manufacture was the only important industry in Sheffield and knife handles were the only objects made in silver.

As a result of mid-eighteenth century pioneering work by Thomas Boulsover, a Sheffield cutler, and Joseph Hancock who developed a method of plating a copper ingot with silver by fusion, a new industry came into being.

The plated ingot was rolled as if it were one metal, and by the 1760’s several firms were engaged in the manufacture of Old Sheffield Plate tableware. Early examples are now coveted collectors items.

Sheffield manufacturers found a ready market: a growing middle class who turned to the cheaper, beautiful articles which resembled silver and were almost as durable.

Machinery invented for the mass production of Sheffield Plate turned out to be suitable for the economical production of silver tableware and from this a sterling silver industry sprang up.

In 1773 an Act of Parliament granted the town its own Assay Office: the Sheffield mark - a crown. After 1904 the Office was also authorised to assay gold on which its mark is the York rose. The present Assay Office is in Portobello Street.

The silverware trade is now the largest industry carried on in Sheffield with non-ferrous netals; the emphasis is on specialist, high grade workmanship and two well-known pieces regularly made here are the Grand National trophy and Lonsdale Belts awarded to the winners of British boxing title fights.