1085 - William Hutton & Sons, Sheffield, two salad sets, silver-plated, Old English pattern, after 1902

William Hutton & Sons, Sheffield, two salad sets, silver-plated, Old English pattern, after 1902 Silver-plated metal, two two-piece salad sets, each of serving spoon and serving fork, William Hutton & Sons, Sheffield, after 1902, all four pieces marked on the back of the stems with crossed arrows, "WH&S", "BP" and "A1", Old English pattern with plain stems widening towards the end and rounded terminal, backs of the bowls with drop, forks with oval, four-tined head, coat of arms engraved on all four stem ends under a seven-pointed coronet of rank, in the shield a bend with two stars, an eagle lower left, a lion upper right. Condition commensurate with age. L. 24.5 to 27.5 cm. William Hutton founded the business in Birmingham in 1800 and moved it to Sheffield in 1832; around 1870 the company traded as William Hutton & Sons, which maintained showrooms in London from 1863, produced silver, silver-plated wares and table cutlery and was absorbed into James Dixon & Sons in 1930. The crossed arrows mark comes from the firm Creswick & Co, taken over in 1902, and has been used by Hutton since then. English platers marked their wares with quality grades, of which "A1" was the highest, and with abbreviations for the base metal; the arrangement of such marks in cartouches follows the model of sterling hallmarks. The Old English pattern developed from the Hanoverian pattern in the 1750s, was the most widely produced English cutlery pattern in the late 18th century and was made into the 20th century; it is the most frequently encountered pattern of English cutlery. According to the rule established in France since the late 17th century and adopted in continental heraldry, the seven-pearl coronet of rank above the coat of arms is due to barons and Freiherren, the nine-pearl coronet to counts.