Oh not it isn’t...Oh yes it is!

It’s uncommon for a dealer to feel for an auctioneer (they all have bigger houses and cars) but I have to say that last week I felt a genuine pang of sympathy for the auctioneer who had catalogued a silver punch lade that was appearing in a sale in a few days time.

My attention was drawn to it by the description: 

" A George III silver punch ladle, possibly Robert Cattle, York"

Anyone who is "up" on their English provincial silver wil know York is one of the rarer and more sought after Assay Offices. Interested I looked through the various images of the ladle. It was pretty standard, a twisted baleen handle (a section of the filtration system of a whale which had plastic qualities when heated so was often decoratively twisted) with a silver end cap and bowl, though the bowl was a pleasing navette shape rather than just plain oval or round. I looked eagerly at the marks, it was very evidently not made by Robert Cattle of York.

I should say now that if it had been made by Robert Cattle what a rare thing that would have been. Cattle worked in various partnerships at York at the begining of the nineteenth century and only worked alone from 1 November 1807-1 January 1808, two short months so any object found bearing his sole "RC" mark are justifiably rare. Still I made a note of the ladle and would watch the auction with interest. I can tell you now I would definitely be bidding.

A few days later it was the morning of the auction (online only I'm afraid in these Covid restricted days) and I logged in to see if there had been any presale interest. When I did I saw that the auctioneer had now corrected the description:

"A George III silver punch ladle, Richard Crossley, London, no town mark"

This is a common enough mistake as Crossley and Cattle share the same initials and both made flatware and were working at roughly the same time so their objects will bear similar styles of marks, especially confusing if there is an absence of a town mark or a date letter which did sometimes happen, particularly on smaller articles.

The auction got underway and I sat patiently as the lots rolled on. When the punch ladle came up the auctioneer made a short saleroom announcement that someone (let me be clear-not me) had been in touch to tell them that the ladle was by Crossley not Cattle and that they had ammended the description accordingly.

Here I'll just draw up my soapbox and say that unless you are directly involved with an item (the seller, the buyer, the cataloguer, a paid independent consultant) it's just as well not to offer your two-penneth. We've all done it once in our lives and it never ends well.

Almost twenty years ago on Ebay I came across a snuff box that wasn't anything I wanted to buy but the seller had misidentified the maker of it in their description. I had time on my hands and a short email, helpfully correcting the error I thought would be most welcome and a kind hearted sort of thing to do in the brotherhood of the Antiques world. I might, I thought, even get a short email back with a brief thankyou and have made a new online acquaintance, it would be good Karma anyway. The email despatched it was not long, despite the international time difference, that I received a reply of just two words, "F*** off". I was more than a little taken aback at the time by the response but over the last twenty years I have come to understand the absolute wisdom of that reply.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of mistakes made in the world of Antiques every single day. I should know, believe me, as I try to buy at least half of them. You might take a cruel turn of mind and think why don't people get things right? But consider that the term "Antique" strictly speaking, covers every single object made in human history except for the last hundred years and that's a pretty enormous field for anyone. Truth be told, apart from trendy design totters or TV hoodwink merchants who trade on having "an eye" any one person will struggle for the better part of a lifetime in getting to grips (properly) with just ONE of the many disciplines or specialisms within the world of Antiques. 

So back at the auction the short, unsolicited, correction to the description having been made, all interest seemed to have evaporated and I bought the ladle at the low end of its £50-80 estimate, though with fees and postage it would still end up standing me a little over £83.

Why then had I ignored the saleroom notice? Why had I bought a punch ladle by a fairly commonplace London maker and why did I feel a great deal of sympathy for the auctioneer?

A bit like C.S.Lewis’ Aslan peering into a stone table you can always look a little deeper. When I'd first seen the pictures of the marks on the ladle and known at once it was not the mark of York silvermsith Robert Cattle, I did also recognise it as the very much rarer mark of the York silvermsith Richard Clark.

Clark had worked in York in the latter part of the eighteenth century. He'd been apprenticed at the age of 13 to the silversmith John Malton in 1760 and set up on his own account in 1773, working until his death in 1797. His commonly known mark is a very distinctive script "RC" which you can't mistake for anyone else but what's lesser known is that he had a small plain "RC" punch where the foot of the R was a little short and the C had a small nick on the inside at the top, subtle but readily indentifiable to anyone who knew it. It was that much rarer mark of Clarks' that I was looking at. 

(Detail of Punch Ladle Mark)(

(Entry from “An Illustrated Guide to York Hallmarks 1776-1858…” showing both variations of Richard Clarks’ makers mark)

In 2000 at the Merchant Adventurers' Hall in York there had been an exhibition of York silver. I'd driven up and seen it and of the 466 pieces of silver on display, gathered from both public and private collections from all over the country only one tot beaker, 11 wine labels and 4 buttons were included as the work of Richard Clark. Since then, twenty years, I've only seen a handful of sugar tongs, a pair of buckles, some buttons and a sauce ladle. Anything by Clark is of the greatest rarity and this punch ladle now stands as one of the largest and best pieces known by him.

(Punch Ladle, Richard Clark, York, c.1786-97)

So it’s a very genuine pang of sympathy I feel for the auctioneer, he had been SO CLOSE, in fact he'd done the hard bit, that mental leap of thinking a piece wasn't made in London but in another Provincial town, he'd even got that right but fallen at the very last hurdle as to the identity of the actual maker. It's to him I'll say an indirect and sincere "very well done" and to suggest he echo's the sentiment of that American Ebay seller I'd corrected many years ago. Next time someone sends you an unsolicited message telling you "Oh no it isn't", politely reply back to them saying "Oh yes it is".