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Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level C , Case M, Shelf 119

Design for a presentation cup

Design
c.1922
Artist/Maker

A.Edward Jones was an important Arts and Crafts metalworking firm, founded by Albert Edward Jones (1879-1954) in 1902, and based in Birmingham until its closure in the 1980s. Until the 1920s the firm’s major commissions were for ecclesiastical and domestic objects, but from the early 1930s onwards they increasingly specialised in civic plate, including cups and trophies.
Jones himself had been a pupil of Edward Taylor at the Birmingham Art School, itself closely aligned with the Arts and Crafts principles of the Birmingham School of Handcraft. During the first years of the business the firm's output was chiefly in the Arts and Crafts style, with Jones writing in 1904: "For many years past the Silversmith's Art has become the Art of the Die-Sinker; the Silversmith only putting stamped parts together, thus making hundreds of articles of exactly the same pattern, which at once becomes monotonous. For a piece of silver-work to be really interesting it must be conceived as a work of Art, and to obtain that result it must be made by a workman who has had an Art training...combining the skill of the artist and of the craftsman." As the firm developed it further blurred the distinction between artist- and trade-craftsman, and A. Edward Jones can be understood both as an 'Arts and Crafts' and as a 'trade' firm.

This design is very similar to a trophy made by A. Edward Jones for an agricultural prize. The Shorthorn Memorial Challenge Trophy (1922-23) included similar decorative detail, but the female handles of this design were substituted for figures of 18th century cattle breeders, and the finial replaced with a figure of a bull.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleDesign for a presentation cup (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Brief description
Design for a silver presentation cup with female handles, by A.E. Jones, ca.1922
Physical description
A design on blue/grey paper for a silver presentation cup with female handles. The cup is in an Arts and Crafts or Art Nouveau style, and consists of sinuous floral and foliate decoration of the base, cup and finial. The words 'CHALLENGE TROPHY' are written across the body of the cup.
Dimensions
  • Height: 565mm
  • Width: 454mm
Summary
A.Edward Jones was an important Arts and Crafts metalworking firm, founded by Albert Edward Jones (1879-1954) in 1902, and based in Birmingham until its closure in the 1980s. Until the 1920s the firm’s major commissions were for ecclesiastical and domestic objects, but from the early 1930s onwards they increasingly specialised in civic plate, including cups and trophies.
Jones himself had been a pupil of Edward Taylor at the Birmingham Art School, itself closely aligned with the Arts and Crafts principles of the Birmingham School of Handcraft. During the first years of the business the firm's output was chiefly in the Arts and Crafts style, with Jones writing in 1904: "For many years past the Silversmith's Art has become the Art of the Die-Sinker; the Silversmith only putting stamped parts together, thus making hundreds of articles of exactly the same pattern, which at once becomes monotonous. For a piece of silver-work to be really interesting it must be conceived as a work of Art, and to obtain that result it must be made by a workman who has had an Art training...combining the skill of the artist and of the craftsman." As the firm developed it further blurred the distinction between artist- and trade-craftsman, and A. Edward Jones can be understood both as an 'Arts and Crafts' and as a 'trade' firm.

This design is very similar to a trophy made by A. Edward Jones for an agricultural prize. The Shorthorn Memorial Challenge Trophy (1922-23) included similar decorative detail, but the female handles of this design were substituted for figures of 18th century cattle breeders, and the finial replaced with a figure of a bull.
Bibliographic reference
'A. Edward Jones Metalcraftsman', Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1980 'The Silversmiths of Birminham and their Marks: 1750-1980'. Kenneth Crisp Jones, 1981
Collection
Accession number
E.286-2014

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Record createdDecember 11, 2013
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