Experience the Life
: Trades
: Silversmith
Silversmith Jimmy Curtis hammers
a silver teapot. .
Click image to enlarge |
Colonial silversmith required talent of an artist
The 18th-century silversmith was thought of as someone akin to
a sculptor. Both had to know how to shape their materials with artistic
talent, taste, and design.
A contemporary observed that the silversmith was:
"employed in making all manner of utensils . . . either
for Ornament or Use. His work is either performed in the Mould,
or beat into Figure by the Hammer."
Consider the fashioning of a coffeepot. The silversmith melted
sterling in a graphite and clay crucible to about 2,000°. He
poured the liquid silver into a tallow-greased, sooted cast-iron
mold to produce an ingot. Using a large hammer, he would hot-forge
the ingot into a billet – a thick sheet that he would then
cut into a circle. Using "raising" hammers, anvils, and
stakes, the smith would stretch the piece of silver into a thinner
piece as he hammered against the anvils, cupping it into a bowl
shape.
Forming sheet of silver into bowl required experience
and skill
Hammering the bowl shape against the stakes the silversmith "raised"
the body shape by compressing the metal with hammer blows from the
outside pushing it inward and upward. When the silver became brittle
from working, he heated it red hot and plunged it into an acid bath
to keep it malleable. When the smith achieved the body base and
lid shapes he wanted, he used small smooth-faced hammers and other
stakes to "plannish," or hammer them very, very smooth.
The handle sockets, spout, and finial were cast in halves in sand
and the two matching pieces were joined with solder. The finished
product was polished to a high shine with pumice, rottenstone, and
jewelers' rouge. The wooden handle was pinned into the sockets of
the gleaming piece, and the coffeepot was complete.
Silversmithing today
Today the work of the silversmith proceeds at the Golden Ball silversmith
shop in Colonial Williamsburg in much the same way as when colonist
James Craig practiced silversmithing there and when James Geddy
Jr. practiced the trade at the James Geddy House.
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Historic Triangle