Tankard, electroplate, Sheffield, ca.1870, made by James Dixon & Sons, designed by Alfred Stevens.

Tankard, electroplated nickel silver, in the form of a banded drum on three ball feet, the C shaped handle cast in the form of a figure of Mercury and soldered to the side.

Given by the Ministry of Works

This mug served small beer (low alcohol beer) in the V&A's first restaurant from the late 1860s. It was given to the collection by the Ministry of Works. It was designed by Alfred Stevens and made by James Dixon and Sons of Sheffield.

Alfred Stevens was a painter, sculptor and designer. He was the son of a decorator and coach painter. He studied art in Italy on funds subscribed by friends, including a year in Thorwaldsen's studio between 1833-1842. In 1845, he was appointed Assistant Master at the Government School of Design, Somerset House. He was employed by Henry E. Hoole & Co. of Sheffield to design grates etc. which were exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851. There collected around him a group of followers, including Godfrey Sykes, Reuben Townroe, James Gamble and Hugh Stannus. In 1852, he returned to London and worked on public and private commissions until his death, including the Wellington Memorial in St. Paul's and the decorations of Dorchester House. He designed a number of the interior fittings and furninshings of the South Kensington Museum (now V&A) including the fireplace in the historic restaurant and the cast iron tables on which the food was served.

The mug's manufacturer, James Dixon was responsible for building one of Sheffield's great metalworking companies, rivalled only in scale in the city by the silversmiths, Walker and Hall, and the cutlers, Joseph Rodgers and Sons. He started primarily as Britannia Metalsmith but by the 1830s also produced silver, Sheffield plate, nickel silver, brass shot flasks and gunpowder belts. He later incorporated electroplating into the firm's products.

Dixon began a partnership with the cutler and Britannia Metal maker, Thomas Smith, in Silver Street in around 1807 but had worked before that for some of the earliest factories to produce Britannia metal including Richard Constantine and Broadhead, Gurney and Sporle. In the early 1820s after Smith's retirement, Dixon moved the factory to Cornish Place, possibly named after the source of the factory's tin. This was right on the west bank of the River Don where there was a plentiful water supply.

Dixon brought his sons into partnership with him in the 1820s. When William Frederick became a partner in 1824 the business was styled James Dixon and Son. When his second son, James Willis Dixon, became a partner in 1835 the firm took the name James Dixon and Sons. These partnership dates are useful when trying to attribute dates to the company's products as this part of their history can be tracked through the trademarks they applied to them.

Between 1835 and 1836, James Willis Dixon travelled in the US to develop the company's vast export business there. By the 1840s, the firm sent Britannia metal and Sheffield Plate to Baltimore and Philadelphia and dominated the US market. When this trade came under threat during the American Civil War (1861-65), the company shifted its attention to France, Russia, Australia and elsewhere opening a London office in the 1870s to manage international affairs.

Despite being at the forefront of industrial innovation in the 1820s, operating one of the first steam-powered rolling mills in Sheffield, Dixons were slow to adopt the new alchemy of electroplating when it was introduced by Elkington and Co. in Birmingham in the early 1840s and initially subcontracted this work to Walker and Coulson. In 1848 they finally applied for a licence to 'meet with spirit the electroplating in Sheffield' and by the Great Exhibition of 1851 they won two prizes for their electroplated Britannia Metal which they were instructed to label clearly 'Britannia metal goods' because they were almost indistinguishable from silver.

Their surviving trade catalogues from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show that their stock-in-trade was tea services, dining services, cutlery, sports trophies, communion services, shooting equipment and drinking paraphernalia. Dixons occasionally employed leading designers, including Christopher Dresser, whose designs they manufactured 1879 and 1882.

James Dixon and Sons' Cornish Street works employed around 500 workers by the 1860s, this number eventually growing to around 850 by the time of their centenary celebrations in 1906. The factory was enormous and large parts of it survive close to the Ball Street Bridge. Such was the company's impact on the area that the works gave their name to Cornish Street and Dixon Street close by. After the First World War, when the market for luxury goods declined, the firm was on the decline although still survived until the 1950s as a large-scale cutlery factory. The company was eventually bought out and Cornish Place was closed as a factory in 1992. A decade of sad dereliction was reversed early in the 2000s when the vast factory was converted to apartments and shops.

Alfred Stevens was a painter, sculptor and designer. Born in Blandford Forum, Dorset (01/12/1817), died Hampstead (01/05/1875). He was the son of a decorator and coach painter. He studied art in Italy on funds subscribed by friends, including a year in Thorwaldsen's studio, 1833-1842. In 1845, he was a ppointed Assistant Master at the Government School of Design, Somerset House. Employed by Henry E. Hoole & Co. of Sheffield to design grates etc. which were exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851. There collected around him a group of followers, including Godfrey Sykes, Reuben Townroe, James Gamble and Hugh Stannus. In 1852, he returned to London and worked on public and private commissions until his death, including the Wellington Memorial in St. Paul's and the decorations of Dorchester House.

This mug served small beer (low alcohol beer) in the V&A's first restaurant from the late 1860s. It was given to the collection by the Ministry of Works. It was designed by Alfred Stevens and made by James Dixon and Sons of Sheffield. The mug is made of electroplated nickel silver that has been rolled from sheet and soldered. The handle and feet were cast separately and soldered to the body before the whole thing was plated with a thin coating of silver.

CIRC.138-1953