The Silversmith
in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg
Decorative capital
Through many years before the Revolution and for a time early in the war, James Craig and James Geddy the younger were probably Williamsburg’s foremost craftsmen in the jewelry, watch repairing, and silversmithing way. Geddy’s shop stood on Duke of Gloucester Street “next door below the Church,” Craig’s Golden Ball still farther down.
At one time Craig advertised in the Virginia Gazette that he had “Just imported from London—A choice Assortment of Jewellery, Plate, Toys and fine Cuttlery. There are some fine visual Spectacles fit for all ages.” Not long afterward in the same paper Geddy listed in some detail “A NEAT Assortment of PLATE, WATCHES, AND JEWELLERY,” and emphasized that “the Reasonableness of the above Goods, he hopes, will remove that Objection of his Shop’s being too high up Town ... and the Walk may be thought rather an Amusement than a Fatigue.” A much more typical notice was that of Patrick Beech reproduced on the following page. It bears little resemblance to a modern newspaper advertisement, but it is so characteristic of its own time that any one of Williamsburg’s several pre-Revolutionary silversmiths might have penned it.
Fifteen men, possibly sixteen, followed the silversmith’s craft in Williamsburg between 1699 and 1780, while this small city was the capital of the Virginia colony. Through the years, most of them took advantage of the newspapers to announce the location of their shops, the arrival of shipments of goods from London, and the kinds of articles and services they had to offer.
All of them combined with silversmithing some other craft, most often that of jeweler or watch repairer. Time and again they assured prospective purchasers that their wares, whether country made or imported, were in the very latest fashion. Each one without exception offered the “highest” price for old gold and silver, including gold lace, either in cash or to be credited against new work. And very often they felt it necessary to specify that sales would be “for ready money only.”
Advertisement appearing in Purdie and Dixon’s VIRGINIA GAZETTE on October 6, 1774.
PATRICK BEECH,
At the BRICK SHOP, opposite Mr. Turner’s store,
WILLIAMSBURG,
BEGS leave to inform the public that he makes and sells all sorts of GOLD, SILVER and JEWELLERY WORK, after the newest fashions, and at the lowest prices, for ready money only. Those who are pleased to favour him with their commands may depend upon having their work done in the neatest manner, and on the shortest notice; and their favours will be most gratefully acknowledged.... He gives the highest prices for old GOLD, SILVER, or LACE, either in cash, or exchange.... Commissions from the country will be carefully observed, and punctually answered.
Interestingly, it was a Williamsburg silversmith of a generation earlier who established a high water mark of colonial newspaper advertising. After a preliminary notice, the Virginia Gazette appeared on August 19, 1737, with its entire back page occupied by the announcement of a lottery to be held by Alexander Kerr, jeweler and silversmith of Williamsburg. As if this extravagance on the part of a Scotsman like Kerr was not startling enough, the same full-page notice appeared again two weeks later.
A typical London goldsmith’s trade card or shop bill. This one is reproduced from The London Goldsmiths, 1200-1800: A Record of the Names and Addresses of the Craftsmen, their Shop-Signs and Trade Cards, by Sir Ambrose Heal. As one may note, a great deal of work and imagination went into the preparation of Heming’s trade card. William Hogarth, the eminent English artist who served six years as apprentice to a London silversmith, is known to have engraved two or three goldsmith’s trade cards of simpler design.
HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
DIEU ET MON DROIT
Thomas Heming
GOLDSMITH to his MAJESTY
at the King’s Arms in Bond Street
FACING CLIFFORD STREET
Makes and Sells all sorts of Gold &
Silver Plate in the highest Tastes.
Likewise all sorts of Jewellers work, Watches,
Seals in Stone, Steel & Silver, Engrav’d.
Mourning Rings, &c. &c. &c. and at the most
Reasonable Prices.
NB. Gives most Money for the above Articles
or Lace burnt or unburnt, &c.
Kerr proposed to sell 400 tickets at one pistole each and give 80 prizes worth, at “common saleable Prices,” a total of 400 pistoles. (A pistole was the old quarter-doubloon of Spain, or a similar gold coin, worth about four dollars.) The top prize in the lottery, a combination of a diamond ring, an amethyst pin, a heavily jeweled pendant, and an ornamented gold box, was to be worth 62 pistoles; the other prizes ranged down to 40 valued at two pistoles each. The list included rings, earrings, snuff boxes, toothpick cases, spoons, tongs, gold buttons, buckles, and boxes of various sorts.
After two postponements, probably in order to sell every last ticket, the drawing took place “at the Capitol.” This doubtless meant on the steps or portico or in the yard, rather than within the building itself. The outcome was recorded in a single sentence in the Gazette: “Yesterday Mr. Kerr’s lottery of Jewels and Plate was drawn; and the highest Prize came up in Favour of Mrs. Dawson.”
Kerr’s long list of prizes—and the items listed for sale in advertisements of other eighteenth-century Williamsburg silversmiths—reveal that the articles these smiths made in their shops, like the ones they imported, were of great variety but mostly of small size. Besides the silver buckles, sugar tongs, teaspoons, toothpick cases, and snuff boxes of the lottery list, other silversmiths advertised thimbles, soup and punch ladles, salt casters or shakers, watch chains, cream buckets or “piggins,” and plated as well as solid silver spurs. Among these, the soup ladles were the largest items.
If Williamsburg smiths made larger items on special order as they may have, no such pieces have survived, nor has any mention of them been found in shop records. Custom-made articles would not have been advertised, of course.
