posted 03-03-2010 10:21 AM            

The garden is calling for help, but the weather continues to quiet my desire to answer. Looking through old silver is, for now, better alternative. At least until the Nashville Lawn and Garden show this weekend.

I do not know the chances of doing this, but I purchased the two tongs above at separate times and they both have the mark of H∙P. The lower mark goes with the lower tongs in the first picture and the higher mark goes with the other one. In both cases the top of the H and P is missing. Henry Plumpton from London seems to be the silversmith and he specialized in tongs.

The information I have indicates that he registered his mark in 1761, but does not state how long he worked. He must have been in business a long time to have two tongs come to my part of the world. Even the broken die to mark his goods may indicate a long career. Does anyone know how long he was in business.

posted 03-03-2010 07:03 PM            

Thanks all for the fascinating comments. I posted another tea tongs above and while unmarked it is most likely English. I must admit I brought this one because it was unmarked, perhaps a little more primitive than most and with that there was the possibility that it was made in the colonies. I now realize that many tea tongs in Britain are unmarked so likelihood that it is American is remote.

This one has twisted legs that are attractive and these must have been made in a different manner than the twisted handles found on many mid-1800s spoons in the U.S. These have a softer look. It also does not have the hidden pivot point as the two Plumpton tongs, however that does not seem to have affected its longevity as it still functions properly.

posted 03-03-2010 07:43 PM            

I think Shlossy might be interested to see these if you contacted him via his website. I've always found him very helpful (and can occasionally boast that he used one or two of my pieces for illustrations in his book).

As for the sugar cubes, I don't think I could have resisted a nibble.

posted 03-04-2010 02:23 PM            

quote:

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....by the way neither Dr. Shlosberg nor I have any business interest...

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No one said you did.

The Guidelines are there to help foster open online forum discussions. Email addresses are snipped for a lot of reasons as stated in the Guidelines.

Generally the posting of email addresses foster offline communications which doesn't support the open online SSF forum discussions

posted 03-04-2010 11:40 PM            

Above is the last set of tea tongs that I have of the scissor type. These are only 3 ¼” inches long whereas the largest English tongs are a little under 5” long. These are marked 800, Corrini and have what looks like a humming bird feeding at a flower. The other symbol is not clear to me. The name Corrini suggests Italian origin to me.
These tongs are actually too small for me to use as my fingers do not fit into the openings.
Surprisingly the English tongs fit me perfectly, even though people in those days were smaller, on average, than we are today.

DB thanks for your comment about the possible Dutch connection of the tongs with the twisted legs. In another recent thread (Reviving the twisted spoon discussion for an ID) Dale points out that inscriptions using dots are “Scandinavian, or more precisely Baltic”. I looked again at these tongs and they have pin pricks on the inside of one of the shell ends of “SC” and the other has the date “1820”. These no doubt would indicate when SC acquired the tongs and might indicate the approximate date they were made.

The Dutch I think also picked up this practice of inscribing with a pin prick, as I think did other northern European countries, so these tongs most likely came from northern Europe and not England.

One observation I might make about posting e-mail addresses is from my experience with a non-profit organization that I assist. We post our e-mail address on our website and as a result are deluged with spam. Our internet provider has an additional charge for filtering spam and we are looking into other ways; i.e. cheaper ways to eliminate spam.

posted 07-18-2018 09:11 PM            

It has been some time since I found any tea tongs, but this pair seemed interesting. They are unmarked, but from Dr. Shlosberg’s book Eighteenth Century Silver Tea Tongs several things can be inferred. The rings fall in the category of truncated pear shaped rings and the shafts have quatrefoil shapes adjoining the hinge. I think these characteristics point to a date of 1760 or thereabouts.

The hinge is also interesting in that it has what I think could be termed a flower head engraving. Dr. Schlosberg states that this decoration was typical of Irish tongs from the 1755 period. The grips seem to be a variation of what Dr. Schlosberg calls the pointed four lobed shell and is in line with his observation that designers of grips made them as individualistic as possible.

These tongs also have a engraving that may be WWL probably for the initials of one of the owners. This engraving may have been added later as it is the only part of the tongs that seems strange. Whoever did the engraving seems to have made the Ws too big with the result that not enough room was left for the L.