A detail of the seal top spoon by Arthur Haslewood of Norwich, £3600 at Chiswick Auctions.
For many years the largest city outside London, Norwich had its own silver assay office during three periods from 1565-1701. The city was much admired for the quality of its output but by the 18th century production had slowed and silverware made in the city was sent for marking elsewhere.
As so much was melted down in the Georgian era, relatively little has survived.
This spoon with its fig-shape bowl has the Norwich town mark, the date letter for 1640 and the maker’s mark for Arthur Haslewood I (1593-1671), the founder of a family of silversmiths that prospered for three generations from around 1625-1740. In his book East Anglian Silver 1550-1750, Christopher Hartop records “[no] more than a dozen pieces, including four items of church plate, survive from the elder Haslewood’s workshop.
Seal top spoon by Arthur Haslewood of Norwich, £3600 at Chiswick Auctions.
This spoon, estimated at £2500- 3500 at the auction on June 11, was in excellent condition, with clear marks and the engraved initials TB over WB with the date 1639 that denote the original owners.
A similar seal top by the maker marked for 1641 with the pricked initials NB TB 1642 sold for £7500 as part of the Coleman collection of East Anglian silver at Sworders in June 2023.
Pieces by Haselwood’s son Arthur Haselwood II and his daughter-in-law Elizabeth Haselwood (1644- 1715) survive in marginally greater numbers.
Chiswick Auctions sold a trefid spoon by Arthur Haselwood II for £3800 in October 2022.
Aberdeen teapot
A good example of Scottish provincial holloware - a previously unrecorded teapot made in Aberdeen c.1735 - sold at £5500 (estimate £4000-6000).
Teapots of this spherical ‘bullet’ form design from the reign of George II are quite characteristic of Aberdeen silver although most survivors bear the mark of the city’s most prolific silversmith George Cooper. This example, with a pineapple finial, carries the maker’s mark AF for Alexander Forbes. Working from c.1728-53, his hollowares are much less frequently encountered. It is in excellent condition.
The teapot had been sold at a Dorset saleroom in March 2024 when it was described as Newcastle silver and took £2600.
Goblet gets away at last
At the third time of asking, an enigmatic Elizabethan-style silver and porcelain goblet was finally sold. The so-called de Pinna cup, catalogued as dating from c.1580- 1600, got away at its lower guide of £6000 following an examination by a committee of experts and two episodes of testing at Goldsmiths Hall in London.
On two previous occasions it was withdrawn following a disparity in opinion over its date.
When the piece was inspected by the Antique Plate Committee in June 2023 it was deemed “an amalgam of different elements, some of which may be older than others”.
Elizabethan-style silver and Wanli porcelain goblet, £6000 at Chiswick Auctions.
Nonetheless, science suggested that all the metalwork is of the period. The first three metal samples taken in August 2023 were compared against a database of results of genuine English pieces of silver at Goldsmiths Hall and found to have a probability of 96.33% for the date range 1500-1600, with 0% after 1697. A second series of samples taken in May 2024 were again found to have a probability of 99% for the date range 1500-1600.
It was early in 2023 that Chiswick’s silver specialist John Rogers received an image of the 5in (13cm) high goblet via email. It combines a Kraak blue and white porcelain tea bowl from the reign of the Wanli emperor (1573-1620) with a strapwork and openwork silver mount of a type that was fashionable from c.1580-1600.
The full history of this piece is unknown. However, it comes by descent from Arthur Abraham Clifford De Pinna (1889-1947), a furniture dealer in Piccadilly whose cousin was the London dealer in Oriental porcelain Alfred Samson de Pinna (1868-1963).
