PLATE XLVI.

SILYER-PLATE,

BY GARRARD OF LONDON.

As the design of the present work is to furnish models calculated to improve the public taste in mattersof ordinary as well as of extraordinary use, we have preferred to select for illustration some of the compara-tively minor objects exhibited by Messrs. Garrard, rather than any of their more costly and ambitious effortsadapted for execution on rare and special occasions only.

If the quality of taste can but be insured in the manufacture of articles of general utility, it must necessarilyextend its influence over works of a more elaborate character. It may, therefore, be readily conceived, that theperfect execution and refinement of detail which characterise the objects we have engraved pervaded, in an equaldegree, the larger and more complicated works contributed from the establishment of Messrs. Garrard. It wouldhave been strange, indeed, if the productions of a house which for upwards of a century has enjoyed thepatronage of royalty, and of the most distinguished of our nobility, had not displayed the utmost perfectionof richness combined with beauty.

The works of Messrs. Garrard formed a conspicuous feature in the third Exhibition of British Manufactures,held at the Society of Arts in the year 1849; and will, no doubt, be fresh in the memory of all who studiedthose interesting displays—the immediate precursors of the Great Exhibition of All Nations. On that occasion theestablishment referred to contributed a splendid gold centre-piece, executed by command of Her Majesty, froma design by His Royal Highness Prince Albert. In technical excellence that object could not well have beensurpassed: its finishing and putting together were perfect, and in one respect it excelled every other pieceof plate exhibited,—namely, in the delicacy of the contrast between the burnished and unburnished surfaces.A soup-tureen, in the Renaissance style, which was executed for Mr. II. T. Hope, M.P., and exhibited on thesame occasion, furnished an admirable model for the form of such objects, and displayed an equal amountof skilful workmanship, and, perhaps, even more taste and appropriateness, than the centre-piece to whichwe have alluded.

The beauty and propriety of form displayed in the articles we have now engraved will convey a just ideaof the perfection to which the Messrs. Garrard have carried the manufacture of plate suited to domestic uses.To the celebrity of those gentlemen as gold and silversmiths may be added an equally high reputation asjewellers; and it is due to them to observe, that the Avorkmanship bestOAved upon the setting of the gemsAvhich they exhibited Avas as faultless in its character as Avere the precious stones themselves.

As many of our readers may not be aware of the difficulties incident to the production of objects suchas those at present under our notice, Ave proceed to offer a feAv remarks on the ordinary piocesses employed.The design of a piece of plate of an elaborate description having been drawn, the modeller proceeds to embodyit in wax, finishing every portion of it with a degree of precision equal to that which is requisite for thefinished object. Assuming that the body of the work is to be formed in Avhat is called repousse, or beaten-upAvork, a sheet of silver is cut into the form of the object, Avhen developed upon a plane surface, and rudelybeaten into a holloAv, or dish form, by wooden mallets. The requisite degree of concavity having beengiven to it by hammering, ornaments in basso or alto-relievo are obtained by applying the internal surface