Rare Charles II silver-gilt cutlery; comprising two knives, ...

Estimate

£2,000 - £3,000

Rare Charles II silver-gilt cutlery; comprising two knives, forks and spoons, circa 1680

Each knife with cannon handle engraved with panels of feathered lozenges and a single flowerhead to cap, both with iron blade, one with cutler’s mark, probably Ephraim How (1652-1720), the other replaced and marked by Garrard, circa 1850, with royal cypher ‘VR’, one knife handle with a crowned ‘TT’ maker’s mark, possibly for Thomas Townley, London; both forks and spoons with triffid ends, finely engraved foliage and mask to front of stem, similar engraving and vacant oval cartouche to reverse, each spoon again with mark of ’TT’, length of knife 11.4cm; fork 9.9cm; spoon 10.2cm, (6)

Literature: Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, 'The London Goldsmiths’, p. 77, records Thomas Townley working in Lombard Street, London, in 1677.  For a virtually identical knife, fork and spoon see ‘British Cutlery: An illustrated History of Design, Evolution and Use’, (2001), p. 95, fig. 58

See the Victoria & Albert Museum collection, London, for a late 17th century knife with cutlers mark of Ephriam How, acc. no. M.976A-1926 and again in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, acc. no. 59.208.76