posted 02-04-2008 10:57 PM            

Geneva (canton Geneva) was briefly part Napoléon’s France, and a French Imperial assay office was operative there from Aug. 1806 to Sep. 1814. After the collapse of the First Empire, Geneva was one of only two Swiss cantons to retain a civil (i.e., non-guild) assay office with mandatory marking. (Vaud was the other.) This plain pair of spoons - with spatulate handles, pointed bowls, and no shoulders – has a good example of these Geneva civil marks: here, the third standard lion’s head for .800 silver, in use Sep. 1815 to Dec. 1881. The maker “Ramu” has only in the last 20 years been identified as Jean-Pierre-Louis Ramu-Dufour (1796-1852).

Most cantons, however, dismissed Napoléon’s reforms and returned to feudalism upon his fall. (The period from that time - 1814 - to the federal constitution of 1848 is known as the Swiss Restauration.) The guild in Schaffhausen (canton Schaffhausen) had a successive line of wardens who served in an unbroken line from 1577 until the mid-1850s. The last warden of the Schaffhausen guild would eventually become synonymous with Swiss silver: Johann Jakob Jezler (1796-1868; Master 1822). He was apprenticed in 1811 to Johannes Kirchhofer III (1763-1831; Master 1792), who was himself guild warden, serving from 1799 to 1831. Jezler became a master on 22 October 1822 and opened his workshop as early as January of the following year. He succeeded his former master as guild warden in 1831 and served until at least 1854, after which the guild was dismantled. Unlike previous wardens, whose marks were simply variations of the city arms, Jezler chose also to add his family arms as his warden’s mark; here it is seen on a “lancet” handle teaspoon along with the Schaffhausen city mark (a rampant ram) and his own maker’s mark, “J.J.”

Evidence that Jezler used his family arms as his warden’s mark and not his maker’s mark (as he later would) is found on a nearly identical Schaffhausen spoon from the same time, but with the maker’s mark of Georg Ludwig Lämmlin (1803-1868; Master 1828). Lämmlin apprenticed in Vevey (canton Vaud) and married in 1865 (at age 62 – rather old for the time!) Maria Ursula Schelling of Engen.

This next spoon is one of my favorites. It’s another fiddle thread piece, large and hefty with a pointed bowl, in the French fashion; I love the way the flat rim of the bowl continues up to form the beveled edge of the shoulders. The fellow with the staff is St. Fridolinus: an Irish missionary who travelled in Switzerland and became the patron saint of the church in Glarus (canton Glarus), and later the entire district. “PF” is the silversmith Peter Freuler (1822-1884; Master ca. 1845), the last of a large family of silversmiths dating back to mid- 18th century Glarus.

Another recent fiddle thread find is this set of luncheon/dessert forks, marked only “13” (i.e. 13 Löt, or .813 fine) and “Walcher”. It can be difficult to positively attribute silver from German-speaking countries marked only with the fineness and maker’s name, but fortunately the mark here is known to be that of Isaak Walcher (1812-1874) of Zürich. Originally from Glarus, he apprenticed 1826-30 to Zürich master Johan Conrad Wirth II (1797-1841), and returned to work in Glarus by 1836. However, in 1842 he married Sara Wirth (née Hess), his former master’s widow, and assumed Wirth’s Zürich workshop.

Any doubt about the attribution of these four forks to Isaak Walcher is dismissed by the retailer’s mark on the two forks accompanying them: “C. Wirth”. Melchior Conrad Wirth (1838-1905) was the son of Johan Conrad Wirth II and Sara Hess, and thus the stepson of Isaak Walcher. Trained by Walcher, the younger Wirth continued his studies in Vienna, London and Italy. He returned to Zürich in 1868 to run the shop of his father and step-father, by that time primarily a retailer of jewelry, silver and luxury goods. Wirth closed the shop around 1879, probably removing to Glarus where his step-father had maintained property. These two forks, and the four preceding, were evidently part of larger set assembled by a patron of the Walcher/Wirth firm during the 1860’s and 1870’s.

Note that on these last two forks retailed by Wirth the actual manufacturer is Jezler of Schaffhausen, with the family arms noted before now being used as the company’s trademark, alongside the fineness of “0.800”. (This pattern was offered by Jezler from around 1840, known as their model #2: “Filet”.) Jezler remains today the largest and best silver manufacturer in Switzerland and primary supplier to most retailers.