Victorian Silver Tea and Coffee Service with Hunting Motif

An impressive mid-Victorian sterling silver tea and coffee…
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An impressive mid-Victorian sterling silver tea and coffee service, James McKay, Edinburgh, 1858, comprising a tea pot, coffee pot, spirit kettle, sugar basin, cream jug, and sugar tongs, the baluster and bombe shaped bodies and covers richly decorated with various cast and repousse hunting scenes and game animals, each of the bodies engraved with the crest and motto of the Stansfeld family of Flockton, West Yorkshire, fitted in its original oak carrying case with the label of 'McKay, Cunningham, & Co., Goldsmiths to the Queen', the spirit kettle and stand 33.5 cm high (handle not raised), the service 5,774g in total. Provenance: The Stansfeld family, Flockton, West Yorkshire, Thence by descent

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  • Embossed / Repousse - Embossing, also known as repousse, is the technique of decorating metal with raised designs, by pressing or beating out the design from the reverse side of the object.It is the opposite of chasing, where the decoration is applied from the front. An embossed or repoussed object may have chasing applied to finish off the design.
  • Engraving - The method of decorating or creating inscriptions on silver and other metal objects by marking the surface with a sharp instrument such as a diamond point or rotating cutting wheel.
  • Sterling Silver - Sterling silver is a mixture of 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% of another metal, usually copper. Fine silver is 99.9% pure silver, and is relatively soft and the addition of the very small amount of copper gives the metal enough strength and hardness to be worked into jewellery, decorative and household objects.
  • Oak - Native to Europe and England, oak has been used for joinery, furniture and building since the beginning of the medieval civilisation. It is a pale yellow in colour when freshly cut and darkens with age to a mid brown colour.

    Oak as a furniture timber was superceded by walnut in the 17th century, and in the 18th century by mahogany,

    Semi-fossilised bog oak is black in colour, and is found in peat bogs where the trees have fallen and been preserved from decay by the bog. It is used for jewellery and small carved trinkets.

    Pollard oak is taken from an oak that has been regularly pollarded, that is the upper branches have been removed at the top of the trunk, result that new branches would appear, and over time the top would become ball-like. . When harvested and sawn, the timber displays a continuous surface of knotty circles. The timber was scarce and expensive and was used in more expensive pieces of furniture in the Regency and Victorian periods.

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