ABSTRACT
The London silver trade experienced a profound transformation between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, changing from an importer to an exporter of precious metals. While in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a higher premium was placed on silver works made abroad (Cardinal Wolsey had to send to Bruges for candelabra, and James I paid far more for Nuremberg plate than that produced at home), or those manufactured by foreign craftsmen working in the capital, by the eighteenth century London goldsmiths had built up a sufficiently credible international reputation to elicit regular orders from the rulers of Russia and Portuguese noblemen.1 Yet much ‘English’ silverware supplied to the Russian Imperial family in the eighteenth century was made in London by Huguenots,2 suggesting a continued reliance on foreign goldsmiths.3 But the fact that orders could be placed directly with immigrant silversmiths demonstrated the different environment in which foreigners worked in the Capital by this date. Although aliens had dominated the London silver trade since the Middle Ages, they had nevertheless formed a hidden labour force working within the framework of wanderjahre travels, a practice whereby journeymen travelled several years to broaden their horizons, to learn new techniques and designs, and to consolidate their skills and experience, before returning to their native city and opening their own shop. During their stay, many undertook work sub-contracted out by English masters, stamping these with their own marks. After a few years, some alien journeymen returned to the Continent, leaving very few visible traces of their presence. But by providing a skilled and flexible source of labour without posing competition to native craftsmen, this set-up may have encouraged continued reliance on foreigners rather than refinement of native skills. This peculiar pattern of circular migration was both a product of the quintessential character of the silver trade, marked by its constant demand for novelties and new fashions, and the relative lack of opportunities for upward mobility for aspiring and talented journeymen in London. This hidden presence, combined with the dearth of material evidence, helps partly to explain the lack of historical research on their activities. There are a few studies covering the early periods. Reddaway and Walker have examined the presence of alien goldsmiths in the fifteenth century, but from the perspective of the
Goldsmiths’ Company, while Philippa Glanville has written about sixteenthcentury alien silversmiths, though her work has focused on eminent aliens and their designs and styles.4 Joan Evans’s and Hugh Tait’s work on Huguenots has also devoted some attention to earlier immigrants in the trade.5 Little attention, however, has been dedicated to the typology of earlier migrations, the skills and training of aliens, their origins, patterns of movements, role within the trade, and relationship with native goldsmiths and the Company.
