Hi posted pic of silver teaspoon, its by James Dixon &son and its 1945 , trying to find out what the pattern is. Thanks.
I think this is silver plate rather than silver?
It’s one of 14 variants of Art Deco geometric patterns the firm came up with in the 1920’s to 30’s and, finding them popular, continued with them until after the war.
This particular design is a geometric rearrangement of a classic “old English with shell” design originally developed by the late Georgian silversmiths as a revival of earlier Rococo patterns.
A Dixon pattern book will give you the factory name for all this. And if someone has one handy and is reading this it’s fairly easy to look up.
Do you think Art Deco will revive and what was it about the movement that was spurred on through the 1920’s era of the Gibson Girl, Jazz and the Flapper?
Why do you suppose shells were so often incorporated into spoon and other utensil designs by western smiths?
CRWW
Hi thanks for speedy response. Will try and look up Dixon pattern book.
FYI.. its definitely silver with silvermarks crown , lion , letter “C” and j.d&s
Yep, that sounds like sterling.
“James Dixon & Sons of Sheffield identified their… vast catalog of flatware using a mix of named traditional motifs, designer lines, such as Christopher Dresser pieces, and extensive numerical pattern/serial codes” , according to Replacements Ltd.
So I tried some AI searches based on your photograph and came up crickets.
You may have better luck on a direct search using your camera lens on the entire of the spoon and firing the image directly into Chat GPT or whatever you prefer to use.
You will likely find someone else selling the same pattern. They may or may not know the exact nomenclature depending largely on if their lot included the paperwork from the original sale.
“Art Deco old English with scalloped shell handle detail” is going to have to serve pro tem.
I note you managed to restrain your curiosity about my counter queries regarding the origin and success of this design in silversmithing history with commendable firmness.
CRWW
Well I’ll have a go, given that firm and commendable are epithets rarely thrown in my direction. Is it because it echoes the work of Chippendale and Kent and other 18th c designers who were considered the apex of English design for many years after? Also, perhaps, is it a reflection of the Western fascination with Japanese art and their fondness for the shell designs? Or that given the shape of flatware with a broad base, thin body and slightly broadened finial, it provides the perfect balance? Could it be that in an island nation like England, the most readily identifiable shapes from nature would be sea shells and therefore subconciously soothing in its familiarity?
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Thanks Paul.
And for the record, I always think of you as firmly commendable!
I suppose the rococo design ideas came back from Europe with patrons of Kent and Chippendale?
I recall the Duke of Buckingham’s Stowe House had scallops shells all over the place in including in my recently restored school room there:
And outside bridge by Palladio and a Grotto which I think Bertoli had something to do with.
Of course by the 18th century not only were silver spoon handles scalloped especially with fiddle, thread and shell but the bowls themselves followed the design of the local Queen Scallop shell.
Their contemporary opposite number in Europe were borrowing heavily from Roman niche designers where the scallop shell was a popular decorative motif used to shape the semi-circular hoods. Symbolically tied to water, fertility, and the goddess Venus, the ribbed bivalve shape offered a harmonious, radiating geometry that later inspired Renaissance and Baroque designers. See it today in the remnants of the Grand Garden of Venus in Pompeiian ruins.
Venus, the Roman goddess, was a direct crib off Aphrodite which the Greeks, in turn, borrowed from an older Mediterranean deity of sexual desire and beauty, with roots tracing back to near Eastern goddesses like the Phoenician Astarte and the Mesopotamian Ishtar.
And that is as far as I can push back on the 20th century’s desire for clean geometric lines even being applies to baroque forms where wild rococo flourishes were essential.
Modern chefs ignore all that and use the shells from nature to serve coquile St Jacques, possibly one of the best things you can do with the scallop.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/235471/how-to-make-coquilles-saint-jacques/
CRWW
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Yes, I should have recalled how the Grand Tour and the recent discovery of Pompeii so influenced the decorative arts of the 18th c. Astarte I haven’t hear from since Cole Porter’s 1929 ballad I worship you - “When the Phoenicians threw a party, the driest host, drank a toast to Astarte” with classic Porter assonance. As far as Coquille saint Jacques goes, I can only say as the husband of a maritimer that all that cheese and cream sounds like something a “from away” would make. And tarragon, Lord tundrin’ jaysus!
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You are entirely correct. The chef who came up with a particularly simple but good treatment was a Frenchman, Daniel Rigollet who won a silver award with his original recipe in the 1980 Culinary Olympics in Frankfurt. He brought the recipe and many others to Western Canada where I had the chance to meet with him and entertain my own guests through the seventies and eighties in his cherished dining halls.
As you will likely know the name Coquilles Saint-Jacques originates from medieval Christian pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the shrine of the apostle Saint James. Pilgrims wore real scallop shells as symbols, tools to scoop water, and proof of completing the journey. 19th-century Parisian chefs transformed the rustic seafood into an elegant gratin served inside the iconic shell.
So there you go. What starts with a pagan ritual some 5,000 years ago become a symbol of first Greek then Roman sophistication and its early European adoption is brought to the great Whig houses of 18th century England: Holkham, Wilton, Stowe among hundreds of others, is copied by the furniture makers and silversmiths of the day carried into Victorian times by the likes of Paul Storr, discarded by the war-weary Europeans tired of Victorian folderol and stripped down to geometric essentials on a mass-produced 20th century flatware service.
CRWW
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Nice precis thank you. And reminds me that Holkam Hall remains firmly and commendably on my bucket list. And with the price of sea scallops today, it might be cheaper to buy some silver or Georgian furniture with the scallop shell pattern rather than the actual bivalve.
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Many of these houses are now owned and managed by the UK National Trust. A membership in the Trust (ÂŁ8.50 a month) can prove very good value for someone wanting to go through more than one of the homes or properties.
The large houses in England together with many of the universities and colleges were funded by private money in the 18th century. This money came, for the most part from the slave trade. The Trust has faced much criticism for displays of homes and land financed in this manner. The opprobrium attached to slave trade in the UK also extends to the Royal family. James II co-founded the West Africa Company. William IV generally referred to as the Sailor King owned or part-owned four huge plantation in Barbados and until abolition ran them with the most brutalized slave labor.
The Trust’s million plus items silver collection, spread across numerous sites, is a very useful registry for those who want to ground their purchases, very often at auctions miles and centuries removed from the origin of the artifact:
I have concluded since the powers-that-be running the Forum have decided advertising individual items is allowed advertising national museums and archives might also be allowed. If my presumption is impertinent then I will of course delete this post.
CRWW
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Here’s a 1930’s tea tray by Henry Birks of Montreal using the scallop design to make the handles on it extremely impractical.
I picked this plated tray up at a garage sale for $4.00 over the weekend purely for the scalloped handles.
It’s yet another Art Deco movement attempt to incorporate largely abandoned rococo decor into severely plain almost Le Corbusier-style favoured by Waugh’s “Bright Young Things” and Fitzgerald’s tragic Gatsby.
Waugh used to come and stay with my grandparents in Shropshire. He goes down in the private diaries of the housekeeper of those prewar times at the time as follows:
“Had the housemaids complain again about the east room. That so-called writer, Mrs. Wilson entertains in the hopes he will say something about her or the house, fails to understand the wash basin in his room is for washing only.”
This was a common fault of modernized Georgian houses where serious plumbing was limited to a straight chute on each corner.
Well-lubricated bedroom occupants got lost on the way to external bathrooms and either had to open the window or misuse the sinks in the rooms.
Waugh didn’t like the window option.
He never did write anything about us until after WWII when he vented his spleen on wartime evacuees from Birmingham/London blitz my father had decided to house for in the stable block.
The book was “Put out More Flags”. The premises were entirely unsuitable and the residents of Hockley decided anything Hitler could do to them was preferable to the benign neglect of Shropshire’s rural “beerage”.
CRWW
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Unfortunately, Holkam Hall is not a National Trust property. It appears to still be owned by the Cokes which is interesting in and of itself. But yes, the National Trust is esxellent value.