Sheffield Silver Cruet Set
Precious Little Gems Commission
Holly Suzanna Clifford x Contour Map Collection
Back in January 2020 I began work on the ‘Precious Little Gems’ commission, offered by Sheffield Assay Office & Museums Sheffield. The pandemic hit shortly after and the UK went into lockdown 1.0, meaning I downed tools and retreated to home, leaving the piece only half completed, with the April 2020 deadline abandoned until further notice.
The commission brief was to create an original piece of silverware, designed to be used at the table. Ideally, it would reflect your individual style as a maker & encourage you to seek out other craftspeople in the city for their expertise and traditional skills, like hammering and hand-engraving, sadly many of which are dying out. Each year, these organisations add a select few new pieces to their collections, so this poses a great opportunity to create something that ‘forms part of a timeline in hallmarking history’ – as per the brief.
This posed a massive challenge for me, not having dabbled in the large-scale silversmithing world a great deal previously. At uni, I made a few small lidded pots and since moving to Yorkshire Artspace in 2018 I’ve tried to make the most of the awesome support & tools in the workshop, making a range of slightly larger, but still ‘small-scale’ vessels with vibrant eco-resin lids which you can see here. However, to make a functional piece of large-scale (I imposed this specification on myself!) silverware was something I hadn’t really done before, making the commission opportunity both an exciting & nerve wracking prospect.
You might not be aware that I also have another side to my practice with my ‘Contour Map Collection’, where I create bespoke hand-cut metal map wall pieces & jewellery featuring the topography of clients’ chosen locations. For a long time, the idea of finding a way to blend the ideas & aesthetics from this work with my colourful, eco-resin art jewellery style had been playing at the back of my mind. This commission seemed to pose the perfect opportunity for me to bring them to life.
I knew that I wanted to create a piece which required a lid, so it needed to be a closed form in some way, allowing space for design on the top acting as the centrepiece. After much deliberation, I settled on giving the humble ‘condiment container’, or ‘cruet set’ a contemporary twist.
My initial design sketches were spherical, 13cm in diameter and only 5cm tall containing 3 simple spun silver dishes for condiments, covered by a leafy green eco-resin lid with a large silver contour map of Sheffield.
My intention was to create something unique, to truly celebrate the region; a striking piece of silver tableware showcasing the topography of Sheffield and its suburbs. The vivid green eco-resin lid underneath the silver map contains layers of hand paintwork reflecting Sheffield’s status as one of the UK’s leafiest cities. The wooden inlay fashioned for the dishes to sit in was intended to be made from an old lignum vitae wood chuck from a metal spinners workshop in the city. Lignum Vitae is an amazing wood; its name means ‘tree of life’ in Latin and it’s the most dense & hardest wood known (which is why it was so often used for chucks – the form that the metal would be pushed onto whilst spinning at high speed). It also has an incredibly beautiful grain, making it a precious addition to my design, whilst also up-cycling a piece of Sheffield’s industrial heritage.
The initial presentation of my design caught the eye of the Chairman of the Assay Office, Charles Turner. In 2024, Charles will be made the ‘Master Cutler’ of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire and it is tradition that a gift is given to the Company, hallmarked in Sheffield that year, ensuring that the collection has a handmade silver piece from each year since 1773 (the year the Sheffield Assay Office was founded). So, after my piece has spent time in the collections as the Assay Office & Sheffield Museum, he then intended it to be his addition to the Cutlers Company’s archive as his offering. But, he had a few inspired suggestions to the design before we went ahead…
It got a whole lot bigger! The diameter jumped from 13cm to 20cm, hugely magnifying the impact of the piece visually and turning it into a real table centrepiece. This allowed for much more room inside the container, so another dish was added. To connect the piece to the area even more, we decided to add hand engraved place names around the silver edge, relating to their positions on the map lid, reminiscent of a trig point in the Peaks.
Unfortunately, the increase in scale meant that I could no longer source an old chuck from the spinners that would be large enough for the inlay. Luckily, with The Persistence Works studios filled to the brim with incredible makers, I was able to visit the woodworker John Thatcher who presented me with a gorgeous piece of English Walnut and whipped up what I needed in no time.
I’d like to give special thanks to Ben Friend & Robert Lamb (Bob) who both assisted during the making of this piece. Bob (one of Sheffield’s most respected silversmiths, recently awarded a British Empire Medal for services to the Preservation of Traditional Skills) was especially key in this piece turning out to be a success. His guidance & expertise was truly indispensable!
The Finished Cruet Set
Hand-built from 0.9mm sterling silver sheet, the base sits perfectly flat thanks to Tony Morton (Sheffield’s last remaining ‘Hammerman’) and is detailed with locations & features of the region, from Dronfield in the South, The Porter Brook River in the West, Chapeltown in the North and Ulley in the East. Each detail carefully hand-engraved by Malcolm Marsden (the last apprenticed engraver in the city).
The Sheffield contour map is hand-pierced (cut using a jeweller’s saw) from sterling silver sheet, tube-riveted (a type of ‘cold’ connection) to the eco-resin disk that forms the lid. The eco-resin lid was a real labour of love, and after multiple failed attempts at making my own bubble-free mould (impossible for this design without a vacuum chamber) I contacted ‘Mr Resin’ for a custom made silicone mould, which worked a treat. The resin was poured in several layers, each one encasing vibrant green brushstrokes of acrylic paint, and also depicting the main rivers of the city.
The oval handle holds the hallmarks for the piece and acts a clamp, bringing the main components of the lid together along with the tube rivets. The four sterling silver bowls were spun by David Allison and gilded by Francis Howard. All the silverwork was buffed & polished to perfection by Gary Jackson.
As you can see, this was a real team effort in which I called upon the help of a number of experienced and skilled tradespeople in Sheffield. It struck me that when you see images of complex pieces of work like this, a breakdown of who contributed to its creation apart from the named maker is rarely given. It’s sometimes the case that the maker is the sole craftsperson to work on the item, but in most cases that’s just not what happens. It used to be that people would often practice one niche skill their whole lives, to perfect it, whether that be engraving, polishing or stone setting, etc. Nowadays, there’s only a handful of these people, trained via apprenticeships who are left. This number is shrinking every year as they retire and the use of machinery in their place becomes more prevalent. Having neither the level of training in these processes I required for my design, nor the desire to use technology over hands, I want to ensure that I give full credit to the wonderfully talented people in the trade who helped me complete this piece.
On show
The three commissions were set to be displayed at Millennium Gallery from April to October 2020 however, with that plan out the window, we’re still waiting for things to resolved and for us to be given the go-ahead for the museum to open again. Helena Russell and Abigail Asher of Gonzo Jewellery have also created pieces for the Precious Little Gems commission.
Hopefully, you’ll be able to view the showcase this Spring, but I’ll keep you updated!
Since then
As with many one-off statement pieces, I’ve applied the same principles and techniques to take the best features and create some smaller-scale, but nevertheless unique spun silver tumbler pieces with eco-resin & hand-cut map lids (again, using the spinning wizardry of Dave Allison!). You can see the Sheffield Tilted Map Tumbler on my Instagram page, here.