The House: Journal of Home Arts & Crafts | September 1902
Record Prices for Old Silver
Tudor Cup, sold for £4,100
While the price of silver steadily falls,
the price of old silver steadily rises.
Every year the records are broken at the salesrooms.
People were astonished when about £70 per ounce was paid for a
James I. mazer six years ago, but the sum of £100 paid by Messrs,
Crichton for the Tudor cup of which a rough sketch appears
beats completely the previous record.
The cup is only 4½ inch high and 4¾ inch in diameter and weighs 14oz. 3dwts.
The price thus works out at about £29 per ounce.
The spoon, surmounted by a figure of St. Nicholas restoring the children to life,
dates back to the reign of Henry VII.
The exact year is uncertain, but to say that it was manufactured
in the last decade of the fifteenth century will not be far wrong.
The spoon was sold for £690.
Tudor Spoon, sold for £690
Exceedingly high prices are nearly always
realised for silver of the sixteenth century.
This is largely due to the civil disorders occasioned by the suppression
of the monasteries when much plate was ruthlessly converted into bullion.
Later, the Civil Wars had a similar disastrous result.
It gives me pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness for the
illustrations of these remarkable pieces to the Editor of the
Watchmaker.
Silversmith.
Curator's Notes
I was drawn to this article for the quiet authority of its hand-drawn engravings and for the way it captures a moment when objects still hovered between usefulness and historical significance. There is no sense here of modern spectacle or hype; instead, the writer assumes that the reader understands craft, weight, and scarcity, and invites them to look closely rather than be impressed quickly. As a curator, this combination of visual restraint and factual confidence marks the piece as a genuine contemporary record rather than a retrospective celebration.
In 1902, the rising prices of old silver in the United Kingdom reflected more than fashion or novelty; they were the result of long historical attrition meeting a newly confident culture of collecting. Centuries earlier, the suppression of the monasteries and later the Civil Wars had driven enormous quantities of plate into the melting pot, permanently reducing the survival rate of medieval silver. By the turn of the twentieth century, increasing wealth, scholarship, and auction culture brought renewed attention to what remained, and prices rose sharply as scarcity became widely understood and publicly demonstrated in the salesroom.
The Tudor Cup illustrated here is notable for its balanced proportions and restrained decoration, qualities that speak to a period when form and function were closely aligned. The inscription BENEDICTVS, meaning “blessed,” suggests ceremonial or devotional use, and its presence is understated rather than ostentatious. The cup’s profile, stem, and foot reflect a confident but economical approach to ornament, relying on proportion and surface rather than excess embellishment, a style that distinguishes early Tudor silver from later Elizabethan exuberance.
The Tudor Spoon offers a more intimate and symbolic object, surmounted by a finial in the form of Saint Nicholas, traditionally associated with children, protection, and generosity. Its contracted inscription, translating to “Saint Nicholas, pray for us,” places the spoon firmly within a domestic devotional context, likely connected to christening or family ritual. In contrast to the communal presence of the cup, the spoon speaks to personal use and belief, and its survival suggests the care afforded to objects that carried meaning beyond their material value, a reminder that such pieces endure not merely as silver, but as witnesses to the lives and intentions of their owners.
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Glossary
Mazer
A shallow drinking bowl, typically made of wood and mounted with a silver rim, popular in medieval and early modern England. In this article, the reference to a James I mazer serves as a benchmark for comparing unusually high silver prices achieved at auction.
Dwts. (Pennyweights)
An abbreviation for pennyweights, a traditional unit of weight used for precious metals, equal to one-twentieth of a troy ounce. The article uses pennyweights alongside ounces to calculate the value of silver by weight.
Dissolution of the Monasteries
The process, beginning in the 1530s under Henry VIII, by which English monasteries were suppressed and their assets seized. Large quantities of ecclesiastical silver plate were melted down during this period, contributing to the long-term scarcity of surviving medieval silver noted in the article.
Civil Wars
A reference to the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century, during which household and institutional silver was frequently melted for bullion to fund military efforts. The article cites this as a second major cause of the loss of early silver objects.
Tudor Silver
Silver objects produced in England during the Tudor period (late fifteenth to early seventeenth century), often characterised by restrained decoration and strong emphasis on proportion. The article treats Tudor silver as especially desirable due to its age, craftsmanship, and rarity.
Saint Nicholas Spoon
A type of early spoon surmounted by a finial representing Saint Nicholas, commonly associated with christenings and domestic devotion. In the article, the spoon’s iconography and inscription are key to understanding both its function and its high auction value.
Auction Rooms / Salesrooms
Commercial venues where artworks and antiques were publicly sold to the highest bidder. In the context of the article, salesrooms are presented as the places where record prices for historic silver were observed and recorded.
Frequently asked questions
Why were Tudor silver objects fetching such high prices in 1902?
By 1902, genuinely early silver had become scarce in Britain because so much historic plate had been
melted down during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and later during the Civil Wars. At the same time,
a confident auction culture and a growing appetite for documented antiquities pushed collectors to compete
for the comparatively few survivals, and prices rose accordingly.
Does the article’s “price per ounce” reflect the bullion value of silver?
No—this figure is a way of illustrating how far the hammer price exceeded the value of silver as a raw metal.
The cup and spoon were prized for rarity, age, craftsmanship, and provenance, so the market treated them as
historical objects rather than bullion, even though the writer expresses the result in weight-based terms.
What does the Saint Nicholas inscription on the spoon mean?
The spoon’s abbreviated inscription is a devotional formula that can be read as “Saint Nicholas, pray for us.”
Such contractions were common on narrow silver stems, and the wording aligns with the finial’s figure of
Saint Nicholas, an association often linked to domestic devotion and christening-gift traditions.
Why did objects like these survive when so much silver was melted down?
Many pieces survived because they were held privately and valued for reasons beyond metal content—family
association, devotional meaning, or ceremonial use. Small, significant objects could be protected, hidden,
or handed down through generations, whereas larger quantities of plate were more likely to be surrendered,
seized, or melted in times of political and economic pressure.
Editorial Policy
This article is a heritage reprint from its original publication and is presented as a historical record.
Phillaneum seeks to preserve such material in both human- and machine-readable form, with minor adjustments
to format, layout, and typography made to improve clarity and accessibility for modern readers.
In some cases, original illustrations have been carefully re-rendered using contemporary tools to improve
legibility on modern displays. Where this has occurred, the imagery remains faithful to the source material
in composition and detail, and is intended as a visual facsimile rather than a reinterpretation of the
historical artefact.
Editorial commentary and contextual material are provided separately by Phillaneum curators to support
historical understanding and do not alter the original source text. This article is presented for cultural
and historical interest; statements within reflect the period in which they were written and should be
understood within that historical context rather than as contemporary guidance or opinion.
