Hi all. This is my first post, so fumbling my way through.
I have become the custodian of a teapot from my late father and would love to learn more of its origin and history.
I believe that I have ascertained the piece is from London, of Sterling silver, from 1838 - 1890 and produced by a Henry Holland or H Hunt.
Can anyone add to, confirm or otherwise assist with this?
Most appreciated and thank you in advance.
John
Henry Holland.
The finial needs some attention and it will have started with a tray.
CRWW
Thank you Bart. I was worrying I had mistaken the double hellix double H mark for well who knows. However the uncrowned Leopard’s head told me is was after 1820 and the young Queen Victoria’s duty mark assured me it wasn’t Georgian.
So emboldened by these findings I pulled up a set of plain fiddle flatware once owned by the first Prime Minister of Canada and noted each piece was stamped on the back with the same mark. Sir John A MacDonald had apparently been in London dealing no doubt with the bankers who were funding the CPR Rail road and had taken a moment to replenish his sliver flatware at the premises of Henry Holland & Son then located at 16 Jewin Crescent, Aldersgate where they moved after acquiring the business of Eliaabeth Eaton who had in turn inherited it from William.
But you know, I was still worried about the marks. I mean perhaps Scottish-born MacDonald had got the address wrong and disappeared into the maw of the printer up the street and they had entered into some sort of dark conspiracy to delude the poor man into thinking he had purchased something by another HH silversmith and so pleased with the success of the ruse they had decided to branch out into the creation of faux teapots also clearly stamped with the same double H initials in the same double helix. I mean I know it all sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory but you have to watch out all the time.
So I decided best be sure and went through the complete history of the firm which I found was as follows:
The firm was established in 1838 when Henry Holland (sr, born 1806) entered his first mark in London Goldsmiths’ Hall.
Henry entered in partnership with Thomas Frercks trading as Holland & Frercks at 13 Lower Smiths Street, Clerkenwell.
Thomas Frercks retired in 1841 and Henry Holland (sr) continued the business on his own account.
His elder son Henry Holland (jr. born 1830) obtained his freedom of the Goldsmiths’ Company in 1851 and entered in the business with his father changing the firm’s name to Henry Holland & Son.
In 1866 Henry Holland & Son bought the firm of Elizabeth Eaton & Son moving its premises to 16 Jewin Crescent, Aldersgate Street.
Henry Holland (sr.) retired from the business c. 1880 and a new mark was entered by John Aldwinckle and James Slater, the firm’s name having been changed to Holland, Son & Slater.
In 1883 also Henry Holland (jr.) retired from the business and the firm was renamed Holland, Aldwinckle & Slater, with Slater’s sons, Alfred Thomas Slater and Walter Brindley Slater, as additional partners.
The firm developed its business purchasing Chawner & Co (occupying its premises at 18 Hosier Lane, Smithfield) in 1883 and Robert Hennel & Sons (86 Charlotte Street , Fitzroy Square) in 1887.
James Slater retired in 1884 leaving Alfred Thomas Slater and John Aldwinckle as senior partners.
John Aldwinckle died in 1894 and Henry Arthur Holland (son of Henry Holland jr.) became partner in the firm.
In 1922 c. the firm was bought by Francis Higgins & Son Ltd and transferred in its premises (9 Newman Street, Oxford Street) where Holland, Aldwinckle & Slater continued to operate under its own name until 1932
All this data sourcing, I owe to Holland, Aldwinckle & Slater, silversmiths in London which I trust also has you personal stamp of approval?
Such is the price of eternal vigilance.
CRWW
The pleasure is all mine, my mentor!
My personal approval has nothing to do with it. I’m too low-ranking… But I’m trying.
Thanks, mate.
Most appreciated.
Cheers, John
Thanks heaps.
That’s very helpful.
John
Thank you, Bartholomew.
Cheers,
John
U welcome, John! 
Mr. Wilson, your musings are like the Road to Hana, it’s not the destination, but the journey. And I must know the story of how you came into possession of Sir John A’s flatware. It is no doubt in a wooden box, rather like his statue in Queen’s Park. Do tell!
Same place I got a medal issued by the Government of Newfoundland to a sea captain in the 1812 war the only one ever issued and that after the war ended.
The medal, which is now in a Newfoundland museum, was in a drawer of a rather good 1820’s four-drawer chest. I bought the chest from a dealer in a prairie town and then, as an after-thought, took a closer look at the drawer’s contents before emptying them for the seller. The medal was in a button box and the cutlery was wrapped in old newspaper.
The seller of the chest was aware of the cutlery, it even had Sir John’s initials on it, but was uncertain about the medal. We sent it to Spinks in London to get an opinion. Spinks made inquiries back to Newfoundland and that government, now a province of Canada, made it clear it wanted it in their collection. It had come to the prairies with the original Red River Settlers. The medal recipient a Newfoundlander had lost his ship in a gun battle on the Great Lakes up near Manitoulin Island and had decided to settle in Manitoba.
This was the second strangest thing I ever ran into buying a chest of drawers. The first was when a neighbor of mine, who knew I collected antique furniture, offered me a chest of drawers which he said was old. I think his wife didn’t like it and he wanted it out of the house.
Never one to look gift horses in the mouth I told him he could send it over. I was away at the time. My wife got curious about what was coming into the house and pulled open one of the drawers. It was full of cash. She called me in London to ask what I was doing with a draw full of US dollars. I plead the fifth and told her I had no idea what she was talking about. I really didn’t.
When I got back to Canada I took a look and sure enough it was full of cash. Turned out it was a southern church collection which has been stored in the drawer pending inventory and everybody had forgotten about it. I called up the owner who had given me the chest and told him I had a garbage bag full of his Church’s cash for him to come pick up. In due course he sent someone over with a bottle of bourbon to trade.
So I guess it pays to look through other people’s drawers.
I had forgotten about the windy, windy Mauii road . Nowadays I am told it’s paved and the beach at the end of it well attended. Didn’t used to be. The beach back in the day was clothing-optional and the riptides were, presumably still are, tricky. Shortly after I got married and at the end of an exhausting three-week trial which I second seated, we took off for a delayed honeymoon.
Place to get away from it all and refocus, right?
Wrong. The Queens Bench judge who found my endeavours before him for three weeks less than entirely satisfactory was there too. No robes.
We acknowledged each other from the extremes of the fairly compact beach and got on with our respective day and families. All was going swimmingly, pardon the pun, until his Lordship actually decided to go swimming. He seemed oblivious of the riptides and, since he had reserved on the trial decision and I didn’t want to go through it all again with a new judge I thought it best to warn him. I guess he decided my advice on maritime matters was about unreliable as he had let me know my courtroom tactics had been. I was about 30 at the time and knew how to work riptides-- relax and eventually it will take you to shore, he didn’t. I didn’t exactly rescue him but I swam out and coached him toward the promontory where we both ended up on the rocks as it were.
I should have got a favourable trial decision after all that right? I didn’t. I think lead counsel took it on appeal and undid some of the damage.
CRWW
The Speaker of the House at Queens Park, aka the Pink Palace, has now let Sir John out of his box. So he stands on his pedestal again looking straight down University Ave toward the Lake and incidentally into my Toronto bedroom window.
As I lifelong conservative I took it upon myself to badger the Speaker to unleash our founding father. He sent me politically correct letters all of which amounted to we are scared of the brushes of the pink paint ladies. I sent him back politically incorrect remonstrations. Eventually I met him, quite by chance in his riding at the Fergus Highland Games and Ploughing Match. He told me to lay off and be patient.
I told him that there were three much more undesirable statues on the lawns of QP if he wanted to box people up. The first was of the Irish renegade who had led the Fenian rebellion. When Louis Reil had led another rebellion in Manitoba, because he was Metis, they hanged him. The Irishman’s only punishment was to be made first Mayor of Toronto. The second is that equestrian statue of Edward VII — not the Abdication Edward, his grandfather, whose mistress was the three greats grand mother of the current Queen of England, Charles’ former mistress and the last is the Canadian doctor who was radicalized by WWI was went to tend the wounded of Chairman Mao who fought against us in Korea and later Vietnam.
The Speaker wasn’t impressed but did allow he thought my grand-daughter efforts at highland dancing were excellent.
CRWW
I don’t see that the Newfoundland govt had any case for demanding it back. They intended transfer of ownership and the gift was accepted. They can’t demand it back, however as a Canadian, I’m grateful that you gamely sent it back to them, though it is probably sitting somewhere in the basement of The Rooms in the bureaucratic equivalent of a four drawer prairie chest.
I applaud your efforts on behalf of those of us who don’t wish to see history erased, and applaud those of your grand daughter at the Fergus games. But initials aside, how was the provenance of the flatware decided?
There is actually federal legislation preventing the export and sale of antique material regarded as important to Canada. I was going to have Spinks auction it. I argued the medal was Royal Mint issued in London and Newfoundland wasn’t part of Canada when it was issued which resulted in a small contingent of prairie RCMP arriving on my doorstep to explain things more clearly. Since title had never transferred, the store owner and I shared the price paid by the government and the medal is, so far as I know, still on display.
The eponymous owner of Spinks was at school with me at Ashdown, a UK prep’ school so notorious because of the writings of another Canadian, Alex Renton it was shut down so I figured he would be discreet. I should have remembered Boris Johnson went there too.
CRWW
Back referenced to the previous owners or assignors, cannot remember which, and reference to domestic archival material related to Sir John. We didn’t find the original bill of sale which would have been great but the household inventory and insurance “all perils” binders fitted precisely and the cutlery was all marked JAM in italics. Much of the work had already been done in the 1950’s for insurance purposes and that material gave a head start to updated verification.
Fantastic. Gives me goosebumps. Any chance of a photo?
I’ll send you one when I get back to Toronto. It’s plain fiddle mid Vicky not really all that interesting except for the JAM initials. Sir John’s domestic life was as chaotic as his political life. The voters in Kingston On. got so fed up with him turning up drunk for debates they refused to re-elect him and he ran in Victoria B C a riding he never even visited but was owed a rail road terminus by him, the end of the Trans Canada Line. As we all know it never got there and the debate about building a bridge or tunnel to the Island from Vancouver continues.
You mentioned the statue to him in Queens Park and its encasement. Victoria too erected a statue to him, a modern one outside City Hall right on Douglas St. The socialist mayor objected to it and, while she is no longer around, Sir John, western version never re-emerged from his basement storage in that city’s town hall. Probably never will.
Mind you, Sir John knew how to use booze to achieve political ends. Realizing the meetings concerning confederation of this country were bogging down he ordered two car loads of champagne to be shipped in to Charlottetown, P.E.I . The various provincial premiers apparently approved and late at night with just four MP’s sitting in the Westminster House, the British North America Act was passed in1867. Oh Canada!
CRWW
His statue in Kingston is also in “storage” no doubt never to return. Just a lonely plinth with the odd splash of pink paint is all that remains.
The champagne appears to have been wasted though as PEI didn’t join the confederation until 1873.
The Charlottetown Conference ,held from September 1st to 8th, 1864 in Prince Edward Island, was the first of three major meetings leading to the Canadian Confederation of 1867. Delegates from Canada and the Maritime colonies met at Province House to discuss a federal union, with social events and banquets facilitating its sucess,
Queen Elizabeth II opened the Confederation Centre of the Arts in 1964 and attended centennial celebrations in 1973. For some reason I was there in 1973. Pure chance. I had got confused between Portland, Maine and Oregon and took off from Maine to Yarmouth NS and thence up to PEI. No bridge in those days so ferries from the US to Yarmouth NS and then from NS to Charlottetown.
CRWW
