Is anyone familiar with New Zealand silversmiths? Looking for any info regarding my lizard friend here. Makers initials PSW (or perhaps PWS). The lettering under the initials leads me to believe its from NZ. AUCK for Auckland, and N(Z) under that. Thanks in advance.
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You are looking for the notable New Zealand silversmith Peter Woods, often associated with the initials PWS, his hollow-ware and legacy works are highly collectible and have been featured through fine art auctioneers like Cordy’s.
CRWW
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Those readers generous enough with their time to read my attempts at answers to questions posed may appreciate this archival search for New Zealand’s silversmiths mentioned in this forum was not particularly motivated by a desire to identify marks of same but to learn a little about what was happening to modern silversmiths freed from the colonial restraints imposed on them by a declining British Empire.
So someone started a conversation about what turned out not to be Irish Silver in an antipodean setting and quickly saw that voyage of discovery devolve into a useful examination of regional history in New Zealand’s Northern Island.
Such is our focus in this forum silver from one of New Zealand’s four most celebrated smiths lay dormant and un-recognized for nearly three years and, I must confess, was only found at all because of improved search engine capabilities strengthened by so called AI not because of any innate understanding of the work.
If New Zealand’s current crop of smiths are under appreciated, Canada, my own country, does everything short of taking up shovels and burying ours.
Which is very strange as we spend a great deal of public money educating silversmiths at places like the Ontario College of Applied Art and Technology and I do not know what happens to all the talent which emerges. Since that college is literally on my doorstep this is unpardonable and I will remedy it.
So while I am quite certain the focus of this fine forum will continue to be on historical material – indeed it appears historical, mechanically produced or assisted material, for some reason-- it might be useful to focus a little on the work of young artisans across the continents.
May I remind our gentle readers that one of the most commercially successful goldsmiths who eventually located his workshop in Conduit St, London before heading to the Ashdown Forest was Australian. I met Stuart Devlin playing squash and only got to understand what he did, other than thrash me on the courts at a London Athletic club, later. Some of the early work I bought off him for little more than the price of the metal, he himself offered to buy back a decade later at four times the price. I didn’t sell but agreed to a permanent loan.
CRWW
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