Silver, with enamel and niello, London hallmarks for 1909-10, mark of Child & Child.

Cup chased with the death of Wolfe, a durbar and a naval engagement, beneath which are three sporting scenes in niello, knop formed of masks and mermaids; at the bottom of the stem a band of red, white and blue enamel inscribed UNITY GIVES STRENGTH; spreading foot with masks, birds and strapwork. Domed cover chased with a beaver, an ostrich and a kangaroo, surmounted by a winged female figure holding an orb and a sheathed sword (the sword can be drawn).

Child Bequest

Child Bequest
The firm Child & Child, goldsmiths and jewellers were one of the most artistically prestigious operating in the Edwardian era. Their premises were in Thurloe Street, opposite the front entrance to the Museum. They were regularly patronised by the painters Sir Edward Burne Jones, William Holman Hunt and the architect, Edwin Lutyens as well as several members of the Royal Family. Despite being patronized by the avant garde, their reputation was for silver and jewellery in an historicist manner.

EDWARDIAN SILVER

Despite relentless commercial pressures and a conservative public which favoured historicist revivals, innovations did emerge in European silverware in the early years of the 20th century prior to the First World War. The cup and cover (1909-10) by Child & Child of Thurloe Place, South Kensington, in a revived German Renaissance manner illustrates the prevailing mainstream taste for historicism while the Painter and Stainers Cup, designed by CR Ashbee for Harris Heal (1900-01) is a very contemporary and subtle restatement of a 17th-century design and epitomises the essence of the British Arts and Crafts movement.

By 1900, Ashbee and his Guild of Handicraft had a achieved a stylistic maturity. For a while the Guild even showed a modest profit but events were moving swiftly. In the 1890s the work produced by the Guild struck a fresh and original note. By the 1900s, Ashbee was to witness others adapting his ideas and extending them further. The workshops of Henry Wilson, Nelson Dawson and Edward Spencer of the Artificer's Guild, Omar Ramsden and in Denmark, Michelsen and Georg Jensen began to produce work that was richer and more self assured than the austere, products of the Guild of Handicraft. These firms successfully popularised the Arts and Crafts philosophy and occasionally incorporated Art Nouveau tendencies. The retailer A.L. Liberty of Regent Street with his Cymric range of silver and jewellery was the amongst the most successful and all remained commercially viable long after the demise of the Guild in 1908.

(Graphic panel: the Silver Galleries)

The firm Child & Child, goldsmiths and jewellers were one of the most artistically prestigious operating in the Edwardian era. Their premises were in Thurloe Street, opposite the front entrance to the Museum. They were regularly patronised by the painters Sir Edward Burne Jones, William Holman Hunt and the architect, Edwin Lutyens as well as several members of the Royal Family. Despite being patronized by the avant garde, their reputation was for silver and jewellery in an historicist manner.

M.208&A-1930