Capítulo IV. Análisis de los resultados
I. Guía para el Análisis Crítico del Discurso Audiovisual
The expanding market for metalware meant that there was a greater demand for product variety and innovation. As well as the development of new products and materials, producers developed new processes and technologies that enabled goods to be made more efficiently, in larger quantities, at a higher quality and a lower cost.89
In particular, the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the development of die stamping and the fly press (Figure 3.3), new plating technology, pierced work, and improved finishing techniques.90 Many innovations were small but had a big impact, or put existing technology to new use.91 Joel Mokyr has argued that until the middle of the eighteenth century innovation was largely the result of ‘drift’ and was part of the everyday practice of producers, but gradually became part of wider systematic processes to innovate.92 However, as historians such as Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten
Van Zanden have pointed out, innovation was more planned before the end of the eighteenth century than Mokyr suggests, and in the case of metalware were largely focused around the new regional manufacturing towns.93
89 Berg, “Commerce and Creativity,” 173-204.
90 Judith Banister, English Silver (London: Cassell, 1987), 59-62; and Berg, “From Imitation
to Invention,” 22.
91 Berg, “Commerce and Creativity,” 184.
92 Joel Mokyr, The Lever of the Riches: Technology, Creativity and Economic Process
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 12.
93 Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten Van Zanden, “Introduction: Technology, Skills and the Pre-
Modern Economy in the East and the West,” in Technology, Skills and the Pre-Modern Economy in the East and the West ed. Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten Van Zanden (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1-2.
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Birmingham and Sheffield, in particular, were at the forefront of the invention of new products and processes.94 Not only was new technology, such as die stamping, used on the array of new products and materials, but it could also be applied to existing materials such as silver to increase the variety, and lower the cost, of ‘old’ luxuries. As argued by Joseph Hancock, a Sheffield silversmith, there was a ‘very great improvement in the silver way as to the silver branch it is so inconsiderable, I can’t describe it’.95 It was this innovation that gave the regional producers a competitive
edge. Moreover, it contributed to the perceived quality and hierarchy of metalware. There were a number of notable differences between the production of metalware in regional manufacturing towns and traditional centres of production, such as London. Plate in Birmingham and Sheffield was generally stamped.96 Die and drop stamping allowed objects to be produced quickly, efficiently, and accurately.97 The process involved placing a sheet of the chosen metal between two dies - one of the desired shape and the other with the opposite design that was raised - so that when the top die was dropped, the sheet would take on the design between the dies. The
94 Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, “Technical Invention and Institutional Credit in France and Britain
in the 18th Century,” History and Technology 16/3 (2000), 292. The regional manufacturers
in Birmingham, especially Matthew Boulton and James Watt, were also instrumental in the production of engine technology by the end of the eighteenth-century, which was applied beyond the metalware trade to steam-engines and the production of coinage. Jim Andrew, “The Soho Steam Engine Business,” in Matthew Boulton: Selling what all the World Desires, ed. Shena Mason(London: Yale University Press, 2009), 63-70.
95 Birmingham City Archives, MS 3782/12/88/12, ‘Committee on Petitions Relating to
Assaying Plate’, 18 February 1773, f. 5.
96 Birmingham City Archives, MS 3782/12/88/15, ‘Committee of Sheffield Assay
Petitioners’, 26 February 1773, f. 19.
97 Molly Pearce, Marilyn Duerden and John Bartlett, Sheffield Silver 1773-1973 (Sheffield:
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producer ‘by means of a single pulley he raises a weight to the lower part of which is fixed another die; he lets the weight fall down on the metal, and the thing is done’.98 Stamps, presses and dies had many different applications, and could be used with different products, designs and materials. As shown in Figure 3.3, an image of a producer using a drop stamp, stamping was often used to produce buttons and other small metal goods.
Figure 3.3: The Book of Trades or Library of Useful Arts, Part III, Third Edition (London: Tabart and Co., 1805).
98The Book of Trades, or Library of the Useful Arts, Part III, Third Edition (London: Tabart
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It was therefore a popular piece of technology that was used by producers in the regional manufacturing towns. Again, this caused a conflict between producers using the new technology and those using traditional methods. John Wakelin, a silversmith in London, questioned the strength of stamped metalware. When asked ‘if it is the worse for being stamped provided it is of the same strength?’, he answered ‘I should judge it could not be of the same strength - not so usefull - should think it could not be stamped of the same strength’.99 Nevertheless, it allowed small metal goods to
be produced quickly and cheaply, and because the same die was used hundreds of times, the design was more accurate and reliable. The quality and clarity of dies improved significantly in the eighteenth century, when Benjamin Huntsman developed crucible steel from the 1760s.100
Products could be fashioned with sheet metal through die stamping, by hand raising and hammering, or through a mixture of the two methods.101 Often, it was the
legs or handles of individual objects, such as sauce boats, that were produced quickly using die stamps, whilst more delicate designs were made by hand. This can be seen by a pair of sauce boats made in silver by John Hoyland and Co., and assayed in Sheffield in 1773 (Figure 3.4). The handles and legs of the sauce boats, as was often the case, were stamped in two parts and then soldered together.102 In contrast, the
bodies of the sauce boats were produced and decorated by hand raising. These highly decorative sauce boats, made in silver, demonstrate the way in which technology was
99 Birmingham City Archives, MS 3782/12/88/15, ‘Committee of Sheffield Assay
Petitioners’, f. 20; For an analysis of Wakelin, see Helen Clifford, Silver in London: The Parker and Wakelin Partnership 1760-1776 (London: Yale University Press, 2004).
100 Crosskey, Old Sheffield Plate, 33; and Pearce, Duerden and Bartlett, Sheffield Silver, 13. 101 Crosskey, Old Sheffield Plate, 44.
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not only used to produce large quantities of cheap metal goods in new materials, but also influenced the design and production of traditional materials and old luxuries.
Figure 3.4: Sauce Boats, Sterling Silver, John Hoyland and Co., 1773, Sheffield Assay Office.
The use of the fly press (depicted in the back of Figure 3.3) similarly demonstrates how new technologies allowed for a greater degree of design, efficiency and quality when producing pierced work.103 Previously, pierced decoration had been sawn by hand. 104 However, because of the fly press, pierced work could have clean
edges and a repetitive design. As seen by the pair of salt dishes made in sterling silver by John Parsons and Charles Hall, that were assayed in Sheffield in 1777 (Figure 3.5), this method was highly effective. The use of technology to make products more
103 Crosskey, Old Sheffield Plate, 36-7; and Eric Turner, English Silver from 1660 (London:
Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1985), 22.
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efficiently at a lower cost did not come at the cost of quality, or at the cost of variety, beauty and aesthetic value.105
Figure 3.5: Pair of Salts, Sterling Silver, John Parsons and Charles Hall, 1777, Sheffield Assay Office.
Innovation in production and technology also aimed to improve other characteristics that were of importance to the consumer, such as durability. As plated goods became increasingly popular in the eighteenth century, there was concern about its lack of strength and durability, therefore producers competed to develop improvements in plating technologies.106 The London goldsmiths claimed that their plated products were a higher quality than the regional manufactures, which they argued were ‘very slight and unserviceable’, and ‘certainly would be worn out
105 Francesca Carnevali, “Golden Opportunities: Jewelry Making in Birmingham between
Mass Production and Speciality,” Enterprise and Society 4/2 (2003), 284.
106 Although durability was an issue with Sheffield plate, many other new products and new
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sooner’.107 However, regional producers developed new production techniques and
technologies that improved the quality of plated goods. In 1743, Thomas Boulsover, a Sheffield producer, invented Sheffield plate, which was a new way of plating with silver that saw copper plated with silver on both the upper and lower sides. This meant that it was closer to silver in appearance and could be worked more easily into different designs and products.108
Sheffield plate was especially difficult to fashion, therefore the technology associated with its production was crucial to its success.109 The combination of the
more effective rolling of Sheffield plate, and the development of die stamping, improved the quality of plated goods in the regional manufacturing towns. A taper candlestick, produced in Sheffield plate by Boulton and Fothergill in 1770 (Figure 3.6), demonstrates the physical and aesthetic differences of stamped Sheffield plate. It was thin and light, and so candlesticks made in Sheffield plate were given a lead or resin core, in order to add weight.110 This made Sheffield plate products more practical, and also enhanced their imitation of silver. Aesthetically, it appeared different to products that were made of cast silver, as seen by the contrast to the silver candlesticks made by Boulton and Fothergill, discussed earlier in this chapter (Figure 3.2). Typically, metal goods that were made by casting silver were thicker and heavier than stamped metalware.111 Nevertheless, both types of production were used by
107 Birmingham City Archives, MS 3782/12/88/11, ‘Copy of Petition of Goldsmiths of
London Against Sheffield & Birmingham Assay Office Petitions’, ff. 3-4; and Birmingham City Archives, MS 3782/12/88/15, ‘Committee of Sheffield Assay Petitioners’, f. 21.
108 Clifford, “Innovation or Emulation?” 59.
109 Pearce, Duerden and Bartlett, Sheffield Silver, 7. 110 Banister, English Silver, 98.
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Boulton to produce innovative and decorative quality metalware, both old and new luxuries, in a range of traditional and new materials. Therefore, the expanding market for metalware and the introduction of new products, designs and technology, influenced the perception of quality metalware.
Figure 3.6: Taper Candlestick, Sheffield Plate, Boulton and Fothergill, 1770, Sheffield Millennium Gallery, L.1943.97.
Many of these innovations in production and technology aimed to increase the accuracy and consistency of quality within the metalware trade. For example, the development of die stamping in the regional manufacturing towns of Birmingham and Sheffield increased the standardisation of production, as large quantities of products could be made in the same design using the same die stamps. This increasing standardisation of goods occurred across trades and materials, including within the
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ceramic and textile trades.112 Bert De Munck and Joel Mokyr argue that the
standardisation of production increased the consistency of, and trust in, quality.113 It has been argued that the greater consistency of products, and thus product quality, reduced the search costs for consumers. Once a consumer purchased one object, with which they were satisfied, they could trust in that producer to produce a high-quality product for any future purchases. The increasing standardisation helped with both the manufacturing and the marketing of metalware.114
Because of the increasing uniformity of goods in the regional manufacturing towns, such goods appeared distinctive in appearance, therefore established their desirability and a new aesthetic in the minds of consumers.115 Nevertheless, it was not possible to mass-produce metalware on a large scale in the eighteenth century. Instead, producers in Birmingham focused upon their flexibility and market specialisation.116 The technology associated with increasing standardisation was not incompatible with variety. In fact, the opposite was the case. Although stamping resulted in the increasing standardisation of metalware, different dies could be used for different parts of the object. For example, with the production of candlesticks (like Figure 3.6), different dies could be used for different parts of the object, such as the base, the stem, and the nozzle. Moreover, the same dies could be used in the production of different types of metal goods, not least using silver and Sheffield plate. Therefore, there was the great
112 Stanley D. Chapman, “The Innovating Entrepreneurs in the British Ready-Made Clothing
Industry,” Textile History 24/1 (1993): 5-25.
113 De Munck, “Guilds, Product Quality and Intrinsic Value,” especially 107-110; and Joel
Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 136-139.
114 Styles, “Product Innovation,” 131.
115 Pearce, Duerden and Bartlett, Sheffield Silver, 13. 116 Berg, “Commerce and Creativity,” 174.
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potential for variety, novelty and a range of designs and materials. The Birmingham and Sheffield producers were able to produce an increasing variety of goods of a high quality, both in terms of their intrinsic value, but also their innovation, variety and workmanship.