www.925-1000.com

just got this one today, they only measure 3.25" long is this right? and the duty mark is one i've never seen before, it's like a negtive hallmark, there is a word for it but i can't remmember what






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This is the first duty mark, and was used from 1784-85; it's often called an incuse duty mark.
The maker might be Charles Hougham.

Miles
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What you have there is an “incuse” duty mark. The duty mark was in this “reverse” form for two years from when it was first introduce in 1784. So you can date your tongs to either 1784 or 1785.

Hope this helps.

Paul.
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Maker is Charles Hougham. Form and size very unusual - my wife (who collects tongs) has gone bright green and is muttering "Why did I not get those for Christmas ?"
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Personally, I'd be highly suspicious of this item. The 'too short' length and evident welds suggests latter adaptation. Anyone else see something wrong here?
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as far as i'm awear they were made in three parts as most cast one's are,
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The solder joins are always found on cast sugar tongs, I believe. I've seen a few other tongs of this size, and they're usually called "minature tongs" or "toy tongs".

Miles
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Hi,

These are a fascinating pair of tongs. The previous replies are quite correct regarding the maker & the hallmark, but I too am a little suspicious of them. It is quite correct that you should expect to see the soldered joins where they are. Its also good to see the Lion Passant struck over the top of one of the joins, a sure sign it was punched after the tongs were made. The items that give rise to my doubt are the bow - which appears as if from a standard pair of sugar tongs rather than the cast ones. Also the bowls don't look quite right - I've certainly never seen anything quite like it. The style of the engraving on the lower half of the arms looks very different to that on the bow - again - a bit odd. Its certainly not unknown to see small, short tongs, even cast ones, but they are very rare. Very interesting and a great find.
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the joins don't start were the two different patterns are, as the red line


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Yes, that's part of my puzzlement. Why cast two arms and then connect them to a bridge piece, when you're just going to handwork over virtually the entire piece? I also find the proportions inelegant - why reduce the length but not the width (in relation to normal length tongs of the period)?
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One very plausible reason is that the bridge piece is the spring that makes tongs work.
Cast silver has no spring, you bend it, it stays bent - bend it too much, it cracks. Wrought silver, when hammered but not annealed, acquires springiness due to compression on a molecular level.
If the solder joint, of cast to wrought sections, is distant enough from the curve of the bridge, the heat of soldering will not conduct far enough or at a high enough temperature to anneal the bridge and cause it to lose its spring.

Regards, Tom

ps. happy new year to everyone, thanks for coming
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Thanks Tom.
This explains why the later bright cut tongs are made in one piece only , as opposed to three for the caste ones. It was cheaper and had no drawbacks. Also why so many of the cast ones break at the piercing and need repair

A Happy New Year to all
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Buckler

(Quote taken from "Georgian Silver Sugar Tongs" by Graham Hodges)

Quite often Cast Tongs would not come out of the casting process unblemished and needed to be touched up at this time

l have over 50 pairs of these items and the amount which have not been repaired are few and far between, most of the repairs have been done very well and can only be seen with a loupe, by thier constuction and design, which if you look at my website http://www.castsugartongs.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; the answer l feel is in their style, some are very fine casting and with constant squeezing to pick up a sugar cube probaly caused a lot of pressure on the arms.

As for the pair under disscussion on here, to me they do not look right, l do not pretend to be an expert but something about them does not look right, however l have been wrong before.

Regards

Nigel
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My wife has just acquired a late Christmas present - these tongs.

When she receives them the matter of deciding if they are in original form or an alteration can be better determined and I will report back.

It's an open question but personally I think they are probably in their original form, which is not an unrecorded one . Page 71 of Luddington ( who I consider to be a real expert ) shows a pair with very similar proportions and round pierced bowls by Thomas Eustace of Exeter. My wife has a cast pierced pair by Charles Hougham with an identical central section to the bowls of these . Like buckle makers , often the model or pattern was re-used in different moulds, sometimes years after it had been first used, and in different places in the work. These may have been used as mustard tongs for coarse ground mustard but that's speculation.

Another possibility is that this was a contempory alteration , after damage, or even during manufacture.

It should always be remembered that the survival of any silver article depends on it's usefulness . Once an item loses utility, it tends to get scrapped PDQ for the metal value. Tongs were still in use for cube sugar right up to the sixties (1960's !) so a vast number survive, whereas we cannot identify or find examples of many items described in contemporary documents.
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There is a slight ambiguity to the above post.
"My wife has a cast pierced pair by Charles Hougham with an identical central section to the bowls of these"
This means that the central section of each of the arms of a pair of tongs in her collection has a boss identical to the bowls of the short pair under discussion. The bowls on her pair are acorn form.
Sorry for any confusion.
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My wife has now received her somewhat belated Christmas present .

We have examined these tongs with some trepidation but are delighted to report that in our opinion these tongs are exactly as made in 1785/86.

The bowl and the first section of the arm are from a single casting, probably made an existing pattern model that had been altered by shorting and adding a terminal flourish. Cross cut hatching was added to it - typical of the 1780-1786 period for buckles .
The arch (or bow) was made from rolled silver sheet as was normal at this period. We were delighted to see that the bright cutting of the arm has the longitudinal decoration turned very neatly at the joint, not truncated as it would have been if an existing arm had been shortened.

Hougham incidentally was still marking cast pierced tongs well into the 1780's - several with dutymarks have survived.

The question now remains - what the ***** were these intended for ?
Not sugar - the contents of a Georgian sugar bowl was cut and crushed sugar cones ( not sugar cubes !) which I am sure needed a longer arm than these. Perhaps the perforation of the bowls is a clue - was the target kept in water or another liquid ?

Any suggestions very welcome
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Its really great to hear that these tongs are in fact genuine. It makes them a fascinating piece of Georgian silver. Your wife is very lucky! They have obviously generated a lot of interest.

Regarding their use. Are they of a suitable size for picking food items off of a serving pate & placing it onto the recipient's plate? A nice little job for one of the servants at the tea party?

Incidentally I do have a pair of cast pierced tongs, dated 1795 by Godbehere & Wigan. The latest I have seen by Hougham have the incuse duty mark, the same as yours.

Regards
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Sizes are
Bowl diam 17mm, Max width of arms (at arch) 12mm, overal lenght 82mm.

As granmaaa said, these small ones are around, but very rare. This is the first I've actually seen but as I said previously Luddington has shows a pair with very similar proportions and identical round pierced bowls by Thomas Eustace of Exeter. In fact the Luddington pair are slightly suspect as neither the cast section nor the bow section are properly terminated by decoration and may have been made by Eustace from cut down standard components - or more likely bought in from London as was quite common on Exeter marked silver .

This is the third pair of tongs with pieced bowls my wife has got. The others are by Faux & Love and Hester Bateman. Both bowls are slightly rococo and obviously made from the same pattern. We have seen one another example, with a third bowl design , marked by a Channel Island maker and with the characteristic form of CI owners initials. Fortunately for our finances this one disappeared ivery rapidly nto a dealers private collection and was never on the market !

They seem a bit small picking food items off of a serving plate - and may not even be food related. The Georgians used silver for all sorts of purposes in a culture that we often misunderstand. Some so odd as to be unmentionable. Nursing nipple caps are fairly common, but many years ago I saw, again briefly , a silver dildo of great weight and amazing anatonical detail.

Personally I doubt if we shall ever know for sure - but its fun to try discover.
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on cast tongs, ther only solder line should be where the cast straight piece meets the bow and usually any hallmark is direcctly on the solder line so that half of the mark is on the cas t part and the other half on the bow of the sugar tongs.
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Thats an interesting observation Hymie. The reason I suspect is that many of the cast tongs were made or supplied by silver bucklemakers - they'd were used to small model and mould making and hence often made tongs before 1770. As bucklemakers they were very suspect ( the used car salesmen of the day) and Goldsmiths Hall probably decided that an assay mark over the join was the best method of preventing the removal of an (assayed ) silver cast arm and replacement by substandard.

Nice to hear from you - I've not seen you since we bought a pair of buckles from you in Bermondsey in 1998. ! used to see your wife in Portobello - but not recently .
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