posted 01-20-2007 02:01 PM            

Hundreds of drawings (1904-) designs, photographs, photographic plates etc. etc. etc.

Any serious ideas as to where he might find a good home for it? He needs to recoup his spending and liberate his spare bedroom before he is either divorced or put out in the dog kennel by his long-suffering wife!

I will post the amount he needs if Scott allows. It is in London, England at the moment.

posted 01-20-2007 02:54 PM            

quote:

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A E Jones

Albert Edward Jones: was born in 1878 into a family of craftsmen dating back to 1780, and died in 1954.

"A piece of silverwork to be really interesting must be endued with a Spirit of Art....." A E Jones 1906

Apprenticed to Woodwards the Hardman Powells, and trained at the Birmingham Central School of Arts, under Edward Taylor he gained a reputation as a developer and innovator . He worked as a Guildsman at the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft where he was influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement and met many artists and designers. Having made some bronze ware at his father's premises he left the family metalwork business and set up on his own in 1902. Success came quickly, the workshop attracting a talented group of artists and craftsmen inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1905 he acquired Jesson and Birkett with its trade mark of St. Dunstan hand-raising a bowl. He collaborated with Edward Taylor's son Howson, owner of Ruskin Pottery, in mounting and using the coloured pottery as liners for some of his silverwork which at this time was all hand raised. The company produced many clock cases with French movements and a considerable amount of Ecclesiastical work. In 1958 his son Kenneth Crisp Jones (also trained at the Central School of Art Birmingham) took over the business which has recently been acquired by C J Vander of Sheffield.

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posted 01-21-2007 02:17 PM            

There is so much in the news that demands everyone’s attention & generosity today (i.e., diseases like MS or Aids, the homeless, poverty, hunger, etc. etc.), that the days of big benefactors stepping up to save/preserve cultural history may be over.

Be this as it may.... It may be time for a new historical preservation paradigm. Hopefully some of the great historians and minds in the SSF will roll up their shirt sleeves, put their pessimism on hold and develop something.

Here is an initial off the cuff thought - just food for thought to get the ball rolling....

Individuals, such as our SSF members, who share a common desire to preserve notable historic silver archives, perhaps can form a professional organization which seeks out such historical archives in private or limited resource institutions. The goal would be to preserve such archives and to insure that the history is organized and preserved electronically and then made available to historians/researchers via the World Wide Web.

A good many of us have probably been confronted with a compelling case for rescuing some bit of silver history. Some of us have actually completed the rescue and are now sitting with boxes of stuff that we don’t have room for but can’t bear to let go for fear of commercial abuse or blatant ignorant destruction. If we all pooled our rescues, we would probably have quite an interesting compilation.

So the question is, will we use these forums to develop a new altruistic paradigm to solve this ever growing problem?