Impressive George III Old Sheffield Plate soup tureen

Superb example of Old Sheffield Plate, this soup tureen in the manner of Paul Storr has all the telltale signs of the technique. The solid silver and applied mounts are finely detailed to such an extent that it is hard to believe that the tureen is not sterling silver throughout. The tureen has a removable inner liner and detachable handle.

In the many years we have been buying and selling Old Sheffield Plate, we've not seen a better example than this.

The tureen is in near perfect condition, and exhibits only a tiny amount of bleeding (copper showing through the silver) around the top of the fluting.

The decorations incorporate scallop shells, French gadroon and leaves as well as lion masks supporting the handles - all typical of the designs made famous by Paul Storr the royal silversmith and then adopted by Creswick & Co.

There is a finely detailed coat of arms and motto on both sides of the tureen and the cover there is the family crest.

The name Old Sheffield Plate can only properly be attributed to one particular kind of silver plate. Old Sheffield Plate was made in a fusion process in the late 18th and early 19th century, before the invention of electroplating that we are familiar with today.

With the rise of the merchant class in 18th century Britain, the demand for an affordable substitute for silver increased. In the 1740s, cutler Thomas Boulsover invented the first reliable and economic method of silver plating where copper and sterling silver were fused together and then rolled out into a sheet and used to create pieces using the same techniques that were used with sterling silver. Given that Old Sheffield Plate was made as a substitute for sterling silver, the shapes and styles were almost identical to the sterling pieces of the same period.