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Author	Topic: College silver
gobus Posts: 9 Registered: Sep 2007	posted 10-11-2007 11:25 PM [26-1516] This is my first attempt at posting photos: fingers crossed! Recently in England I found a set of six George III forks, in the Old English pattern. They're hallmarked for London, 1798, and made by Peter and Ann Bateman. What's interesting about them is the engraving: "Coll. Exon. Oxon." That abbreviation means that they once belonged to Exeter College, Oxford. After buying them in an Oxford street market, I wrote to the Bursar of the college, asking for reassurance that they hadn't been stolen and offering to return them if they had been. I received a very courteous reply, saying that I had no cause for worry, and that colleges sometimes do sell off their surplus silver. A friend of mine has some tableware of the same period, engraved not only with the college name (in this case Jesus College, Cambridge) but with the name of an individual. His theory is that some students would bring their own tableware to college with them, perhaps for use in their rooms rather than in the dining hall. I wonder whether the oldest American colleges had, or have, silver collections. IP: Logged
silverhunter Posts: 704 Registered: Jul 2007	posted 10-12-2007 11:34 AM I found it a nice story about your silver forks, they are in a splendid condition and the marks are very clear and beautiful stamped. It's good that you know all the information behind it and have told it in your topic. It's great fun to research the things you buy, I always enjoy that. I don't know if they had in America in that period already colleges? Is the silver alloy not one of the highest used for making table silver like this? Greetings silverhunter! I hope to read a lot of American reactions now to! IP: Logged
silverhunter Posts: 704 Registered: Jul 2007	posted 10-12-2007 11:49 AM Harvard University started in 1636 IP: Logged
argentum1 Posts: 602 Registered: Apr 2004	posted 10-12-2007 12:03 PM When I enrolled at Ohio State University in 1969 the university was still using sterling in the dormitory dinning rooms. Within 3 years all of it had been replaced by stainless. It seems that even university students had sticky fingers. IP: Logged
Kimo Posts: 1652 Registered: Mar 2003	posted 10-12-2007 02:33 PM One of my degrees is from the oldest University in the US. It is the University of Pennsylvania which is a private university that was started in 1740 and is one of the Ivy League Universities. There are three or four schools in the US that were started earlier but they were divinity schools at that point - for training clergy. Yale, Harvard, and William and Mary are examples. The University of Pennsylvania was the only one that was for academic higher education which is due to the personality of its founder - Benjamin Franklin. Anyway, I don't recall ever having seen things like sterling table services, but then I was not invited to the President's house for tea or to the Board of Trustee's fancy dinners where I would imagine there would be such things. I have kept an eye out over the years for sterling objects with this University's well known coat of arms or other markings. Normally I see things like sterling awards and trophies from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Once in a while I see sterling and enameled pins such as the one I bought not long ago and asked about in the following posting on the General Silver part of this forum: University of Pennsylvania Pin (C.M. Robbins - Unlisted Marking?) IP: Logged
silverhunter Posts: 704 Registered: Jul 2007	posted 10-12-2007 04:53 PM I hope (if it's possible)to ask permission to may see information at the university, for instance to may look into old inventarisation lists of all the silverobjects they had. Perhaps some patterns can be showed from american universities (used in the same period, around 1790)? IP: Logged
gobus Posts: 9 Registered: Sep 2007	posted 10-18-2007 12:39 AM Thank you, Silverhunter, Argentum1, and Kimo for your interesting responses. To answer Silverhunter first: the marks are for English Sterling, which is 925/1000 silver content. Argentum1: I'm astonished to hear about OSU putting silver on the students' tables right up to the 1960s. From what you say, there must be a good bit of it floating free now. Kimo: I suspect that the older American universities do have special tableware for visits of trustees, etc. A published inventory would be fascinating, but hard to get. Recently the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford held an exhibition of college silver (with a catalogue) which included some of the finest and oldest specimens in existence. But this did not include the vast quantity of 18th-19th century tableware still in everyday use by the faculty, if not by the students. IP: Logged
tmockait Posts: 963 Registered: Jul 2004	posted 10-18-2007 04:51 PM I suspect that having sets of silver and dishes is associated with the formal dining custom of High Table still practiced occasionally at Oxford and Cambridge but not at any American University that I know. Since Oxford dates to the end of the 11th century and was originally staffed by clergy, it probably stored wealth in the form of silver items hallmarked so that they could be converted to coin as need arose - just like other institutions and individuals during the middle ages. An additional historical note: the town of Oxford served as temporary capital for Charles I during the English Civil War. Perennially cash poor, the king and his royalist supporters collected silver to be converted to coin to fund the wore. This helps explain the dirth of collectible English Silver from the seventeenth century or earlier. Very sporting of you to inquire if the items had been pinched. I wish everone were so honest. Tom IP: Logged
gobus Posts: 9 Registered: Sep 2007	posted 10-18-2007 11:23 PM TMockait: thanks for making these two important points. The catalogue I mentioned ("A Treasured Inheritance: 600 Years of Oxford College Silver") has a fascinating chapter on how far the colleges went, or did not go, to comply with King Charles I's need for coin. Since he was in a way their guest (having taken refuge in Oxford), he couldn't alienate them by total confiscation of their plate. Apparently the colleges continue as major commissioners of contemporary silver, but that's another story. So is the perennial transformation of coin to plate, and plate to coin (or bullion) again. Since we're invited to say something of our own interests and motives, I'll add that for me, silver is a way of connecting with a past which in some, though not all ways, was more gracious and aesthetic than the present. It's quite an intimate way (think where those forks have been!), so that for a while, we can all "dine at High Table." IP: Logged
tmockait Posts: 963 Registered: Jul 2004	posted 10-19-2007 01:52 PM quote: Originally posted by tmockait: I suspect that having sets of silver and dishes is associated with the formal dining custom of High Table still practiced occasionally at Oxford and Cambridge but not at any American University that I know. Since Oxford dates to the end of the 11th century and was originally staffed by clergy, it probably stored wealth in the form of silver items hallmarked so that they could be converted to coin as need arose - just like other institutions and individuals during the middle ages. An additional historical note: the town of Oxford served as temporary capital for Charles I during the English Civil War. Perennially cash poor, the king and his royalist supporters collected silver to be converted to coin to fund the war. This helps explain the dirth of collectible English Silver from the seventeenth century or earlier. Very sporting of you to inquire if the items had been pinched. I wish everone were so honest. Tom IP: Logged
adelapt Posts: 418 Registered: May 2003	posted 10-13-2011 06:05 PM P'raps this would be a good time to look at that date again. How about making the forks London 1793 instead of 1798? IP: Logged

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