Price range: Sold

For sale is this rare arts and crafts silver  hand hammered tray by the rarely seen maker Sarah Louisa Rimmington.  The tray is chased and embossed with what may be a yoke in a classic art nouveau design, the significance of which I have not established.

Louisa Rimmington as she was called, is best known as the partner silversmith from 1903 to 1905 of her better known, and undoubtedly more skilled, niece, Florence. Florence was a professional jeweller and metalwork teacher.  See A1300 for more detail on Florence where I have a dish by her marked with her and her sisters mark.

Louisa Rimmington (c. 1860-1949) entered her own mark with the London assay office in 1907. In 1911 (Source: Census) she describes herself as an art metal worker.  The census suggests her studio was at the family home in Sutton, headed by her affluent tea merchant brother, but she also seems to have worked from Ebury Street, London from c 1903-1923 (see Stephen Pudney’s article referenced below) .  In the 1939 Directory, now 80, she describers herself as a retired art metal worker.

Louisa seems to have taken up metalwork later in her life, perhaps as chaperone in London and supporter of her niece, with whom she lived in Selby, Yorkshire up until c 1901.  Certainly until 1901 there is no indication she studied or practiced metalwork, describing herself as “living off own means” in the earlier censuses and, oddly, in 1901 giving her occupation as hotel manageress.  As with her niece Florence, she never married

For more information on the Rimmington’s, particularly, Florence, see Professor Steve Pudney’s article “Florence Rimmington and the Fawcett jewel”, in the Decorative Art Society Journal 2022.

Maker: Louisa Rimmington

Designer: Louisa Rimmington

Date : 1908

Marks: SLR, London,  “n”

Material: Sterling silver

Condition: Excellent

Size: 10.5 cm wide, 22.5 cm long

Weight : 137 grams, 4.8 oz