Introduction to Archibald Knox

Archibald Knox was born on the Isle of Man, Douglas, April 1869.  He was the fifth son of Scottish parents, who moved to the Isle of Man in around 1840.

Knox studied art at the Douglas School of Art.  The School followed the same curriculum as the more famous Glasgow School of Art that was at the heart of the modern movement from 1890.  Knox was the star pupil of the School and, as whilst his fame today is very much as a designer for Liberty, he was always foremostly an artist and art teacher.

To understand Knox you have to understand the Isle of Man.  It is a small island in the Irish sea set between Scotland and Ireland.  Its heritage is ancient, having been inhabited by the Celts in the Bronze age from around 1000 BC.  Like many Islands, it has its own proud independent heritage.  The strands of this being Celtic and Norse.

The Island’s natural history is also key to understanding Knox.  The Island is wind swept with few trees.  The coastline both rocky and yet with bays of some of the finest beaches. The interior of the Island dominated by hills and the mountainous Snaefell.

It was this unspoilt Isle of Man that Knox took to his heart.  His affections no doubt heightened by the threat to this landscape from the development of the island from c 1860.  The railways gave ready access to the Island via the port of Liverpool from which there were regular sailings to the Island.  Queen Victoria popularised the Island as a tourist destination with a consequent explosion in tourism threatening the Island’s traditions.

In 1896 Knox wrote an article published in the widely read and prestigious Studio Art Journal.  Its title, “The Isle of Man as a Sketching Ground”.  It is a long eulogy to the Isle of Man.  A quote from that article says much of Knox’s persona:

[In Castletown, Isle of Man]… the sea enters into every view, grey white or glistening beneath the sun, tenderest of blues in the evening, or deep turquoise under the influence of a breeze; it runs in streaks into land touching the greens and pinks of spring, and insinuates itself into the gardens of the fishermen’s cottages; it winds among great stretches of golden wrack; and its mists float on to the land where the coast is depressed, offering new forms of clod and new fancies of subject. (p. 146)

In 1897 at the age of 33 Knox left the Isle of Man and set off for London as a teaching assistant at Redhill College of Art. Through a mutual friend Knox was invited to begin design for The Silver Studio, a commercial design studio.  They in turn sold on Knox’s textile, metalwork and other designs to Liberty & Co of London and Paris.

Knox was one of the Silver Studio’s most accomplished designers and in the Summer of 1900 he returned to the Isle of Man, where he worked directly for Liberty as a designer.  It was from this point, perhaps inspired by his local environment, that Knox produced many of the most modern radical designs ever seen.

Among Knox’s most celebrated contributions to design are his Cymric silver for Liberty & Co. Liberty established this range of “Artistic Silver” as their catalogue called it in May 1899.  Some of these early Knox designs are quite historicist in inspiration, lacking any art nouveau influence and illustrate that Knox was still learning his craft as a three dimensional designer. From about 1900 Knox designs for Liberty blossomed.  Probably through a mix of experience, and also perhaps inspired by his return to the Isle of Man in the Summer of 1900.   Knox silver designs had two distinct elements.  Firstly he often used Celtic entrelac (knots) and other Celtic symbols in his work.  This was his take on modern art nouveau, acceptable to the British public, for whom continental art nouveau was seen as rather foreign and sexualised. He was also a true modernist and many of his pieces, with or without Celtic influence, demonstrate the clean lines and geometry we think of as very modern today, and rarely seen in c. 1900 in any media.  His design mantra was captured by a quote from his teaching notes that survives.

“Aim at order, hope for beauty”.

It is worth noting that Knox was not a silversmith and made none of his own designs.  The pieces themselves were made by William Hair Haseler, a Birmingham manufacturer who formed a joint Venture with Liberty.

In around 1902 Liberty launched its Tudric pewter range.  This was designed to be a more affordable range than Cymric silver.  Of Knox’s specific Tudric designs, his mantel clocks, are now considered some of his greatest works.  In keeping with the theme of his Manx inspiration, he produced four very large (c 40 cm high) mantel clocks (commonly now called his “great” clocks) which took inspiration from the ancient standing stones found on the Isel of Man.  Notwithstanding their ancient design inspiration, these are breathtakingly modern examples of his work.

In addition to the Cymric silver range, Knox also produced many jewellery designs for Liberty.  As before his inspiration was typically taken from the Isle of Man.  Liberty used his designs to produce both popular and relatively affordable silver pieces, through to major hand crafted and expensive gold pieces.

Whilst today, Knox is probably most renowned as a designer, he was throughout his life foremostly an accomplished artist, mainly in watercolour. Inspired by the landscapes of the Isle of Man and the natural world around him, Knox’s watercolour paintings capture the beauty and tranquillity of the Isle of Man with remarkable skill and sensitivity.  As one student wrote of Knox:

“He is the man who could paint the wind”

In 1904 Knox returned to the UK where he took up a teaching post at Kingston-on-Thames School of Art.  It is at about this same time that he ceased to work for Liberty as a designer.

At the School all went well until 1912 when Knox fell afoul of a school inspection that criticised him for being too individualistic in his teaching practice and for following the principles of l’Art Nouveau.  In anger, Knox resigned his teaching post and soon after left for America arriving in Philadelphia. Here he began teaching at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and designed rugs for Bromley & Co. of Philadelphia. However his sojourn in America was not successful and within the year he was back in the Isle of Man where he was to remain until his death.

While he was in America Knox’s Kingston students resigned en masse. In an indication of the high esteem in which he was held they, remarkably, formed the Knox Guild of Design and Craft which was to prove an enduring proponent of his work over the next two decades.

From the Isle of Man Knox was to keep in constant contact with the Knox Guild and he exhibited at their annual Arts & Crafts Fair in London and Kingston. He exhibited a large quantity of watercolours at their fairs held at Whitechapel Gallery London in 1921, 1923 and 1925. The director of the National Gallery of Canada spotted his watercolours and arranged a solo exhibition of eighty watercolours in Ottawa at the National Gallery of Canada in 1926.  The exhibition catalogue states that, “Mr Knox is.…in the forefront of English water colour painters today.”

For the last twenty years of his life Knox taught art at the Douglas School of Art and several other schools on the Island. Knox turned his hand to other areas of design and art during his lifetime.  He designed some exquisite Celtic inspired furniture that was mainly for his own use. He also designed gravestones, war memorials and book covers, mainly for those he knew on the Isle of Man.  All beautiful aesthetic Celtic inspired feasts of design.  Most importantly was his life’s work illustrating St Patrick’s story “The Deers Cry” (a nationalist gaelic poem) and the Book of Memoriam, for those Manxmen lost in the Great War.  Today his illustrated manuscripts are regarded as national treasures still housed and exhibited on the Isle of Man.

Knox never married, he was a devout Anglo Catholic and a Freemason. He died in 1933 at the age of 68.  His gravestone at Braddan just outside Douglas, Isle of Man is inscribed:

“Archibald Knox, artist, humble servant of God in the ministry of the beautiful” 

There are many designers and architects who have made their mark on 20th century design but very few are household names.  Of those that started the modern movement and influenced design from the very beginning of the 20th century there are perhaps fewer than ten internationally recognised names.   Of the two most celebrated you would perhaps choose Charles Rennie Mackintosh from Britain and Frank Lloyd Wright from America.   Both of these designers were famous and influential in their own time, and asserted their modernist design philosophy pro-actively both through their work and writings. To this group might also be added icons of the “art nouveau” movement, Lalique, Galle and Tiffany; also household names having placed their signature and brand on every piece of work.

In Knox we have a man who enjoyed none of this recognition.  He was largely unknown in his time, his designs all being attributed to the Regent Street store Liberty & Co, or on occasion Rex Silver, the head of the design studio who supplied Liberty with much of their metalwork designs.  Knox was a reserved man, who made no grand pronouncements about the significance of his work and did not promote his design philosophy publicly.

For those of us that admire Knox, it is his modesty that in part makes him so attractive.  Slowly but surely from around 1975 when the Victoria and Albert Museum staged an exhibition celebrating 100 years of Liberty & Co, Knox’s visibility and acclaim have been rising.

Today, Knox has international recognition and his works are on display in major museums from America to Australia.  Knox has accomplished this purely by the striking qualities of his designs. His work has spoken for him.

2024-11-29T14:03:22+00:00November 27, 2024|Guides|

How To Polish Arts and Crafts Silver

Objectives

This may seem like an obvious question, but before polishing any of your silver, consider what are your objectives in polishing and what do you want the final piece to look like? One person’s aesthetic can differ from another’s, and how far you polish your silver can dramatically alter the appearance of your piece.

Whilst this is subjective, for arts and craft silver I would personally say do not over polish. You really do not want a modern shiny mirror like finish. I like a nice almost grey patina. Patina is not tarnish, it arises from the use of the silver over decades and centuries, forming tiny micro scratches on the silver that dull the surface. In my view you want to retain this through any polishing process. Each time a piece of silver is polished a very small amount of silver is removed. If you wish to preserve the chased and engraved areas of a piece of silver the less polishing that you do the better.

Also consider whether sunken areas of silver (edge of wirework, lowered areas of repousse) require polishing. A good designer or silversmith will have thought about how silver tarnishes and may well want the piece to develop silvery and black contrasts that can give depth and definition to a design.

It is also worth considering whether any of the silver is oxidised. This is a deliberate process of blackening silver using heat and chemicals by the silversmith / designer. An oxidised area of silver should never be polished as you will remove the dark patina and alter the piece’s aesthetic forever. Whilst uncommon, some arts and crafts silver was oxidised, and also it was much used in the slightly earlier aesthetic period. If you are unsure whether an item is heavily tarnished or in fact oxidised, best consult an expert before polishing.

Finally remember that your number one objective is not to break or damage the piece you are polishing. The polishing process places your item at its most vulnerable, take care. Remember that silver is a pretty soft material and that enamels are essentially thin layers of essentially irreparable
glass.

Where to polish?

This is not as obvious as it first may seem. Given your priority is to ensure that you cannot damage the silver, I recommend sitting at a table with a soft covering over the table. Since this is likely to get dirty, I recommend old towels or layers of newspaper (or both). Try and avoid standing and polishing.

At some point you are probably going to drop a piece whilst polishing – make sure it can withstand that. Also note that several of the silver polishes recommended below recommend that the room you are polishing in is well ventilated.

How often to polish?

How often will depend on how quickly your silver tarnishes. If kept in airtight cabinets or wrapped up, your silver may only need polishing annually or less.  By contrast a piece left open in a room on a sideboard may need polishing every six to eight weeks or so.

How often also depends on how offended you are by a little tarnish. I would suggest with arts and crafts silver it was never meant to be highly polished to a mirror like finish and so live happily with some tarnish. The silver I have that is exposed to air I polish every few months only.

What you must not do is allow your silver to become so tarnished that the tarnish cannot be readily polished off with a cloth. As discussed below, you want to avoid, as far as possible, hard rubbing or abrasive silver polish, so better to polish gently and “often” than rarely and intensely

What polish to use?

There are no hard and fast rules, but these are my strongly held personal views. There is a hierarchy to use depending on the nature of the piece and extent of the tarnish.

Goddards long term silver polish (blue) cloth

These are very easy to use and gentle – but not hugely effective. They will not remove material tarnish and rubbing very hard with a cloth is to be avoided as, over time, you will wear the silver. I use a simple soft cloth (not synthetic) if I have been diligent in my frequency of polishing and am polishing silver that is only lightly tarnished.

Goddard’s silver polish foam

This is quite mild and easy to use. It is my first “go to choice” for items with tarnish in hard to get to areas. BUT IT REQUIRES THAT YOU USE WATER, AND NEVER USE WITH ITEMS THAT MAY TRAP WATER. So it is unsuited to many pieces including those with stones, enamels (water can get trapped behind) or with silver that may have holes (eg from casting), or of course with wood (eg frames). I emphasise the avoidance of water as, surprisingly, water will effectively rot silver over time, equivalent to iron rusting.

Goddard’s long term silver polish (pink) cream

This, when used with the Goddard’s cloth, is effective on tarnish of some age, but is not hugely effective. When used regularly it will prove quite abrasive. I use as infrequently as possible. It dries to a pink solid and gets in seams and grooves in the silver which looks ugly. So I use in conjunction with a toothpick or cocktail stick to clean out dried polish after polishing. For hard to get to areas try using cotton earbuds (Q-tips) dipped in a little cream and then go back over the polished area with a clean bud.

Silvo tarnish guard (white) cream for silver

This is highly effective and I use by placing on a Goddard’s cloth. I only use it with really quite tarnished items, typically those I am owning/cleaning for the first time. It is mildly abrasive and if used often or with overt polishing force will start to remove your silver’s patina. As with Goddards pink polish it dries to a visible powder and use a toothpick to remove dried polish. For hard to get to areas try using cotton earbuds (Q-tips) dipped in a little cream and then go back over the polished area with a clean bud.

Silver tarnish guard metal polish wadding for silver (Silvo Tarnish Guard))

This is a pink fibrous cloth that comes in a tin with a highly toxic and effective polish absorbed within the cloth. As far as possible never use this. Whilst this polish is highly effective, and sometimes has to be used as a last resort with dark long standing tarnish, it will rapidly (one polish only) remove the patina of your piece and make it bright, shiny and mirror like, losing much of its arts and crafts character.

Any chemical processes including dips

Use these very sparingly. These work by essentially replating the silver chemically. You will lose all tarnish and patina and your piece will look brand new and “wrong”. Some of these processes can also leave the silver looking slightly milky or white.

The main virtue of dipping is that you are not rubbing at delicate chased or engraved areas – this may be a valuable benefit over physical polishing for some pieces. If dip is used, never leave a piece soaking in it but just dip it in, remove it and rinse off under hot water.

How to polish silver with stones / enamels

This is a fairly specific problem to arts and craft silver. Generally speaking, try and keep polish off stones and enamels. Soft enamel (ie plastic, not fired) will rapidly deteriorate when polished. Some stones (turquoise) are relatively porous and can trap or absorb polish. On a brighter note, hard glass fired enamel and hard semi-precious stones (eg agates) are unlikely to be affected by polishing.

Also be careful not catch your polishing cloth on stone or enamel settings.

How to polish silver and copper mixed metal items

Again, this is a fairly specific problem for arts and craft silver. Most of the polishing processes described above will remove the patina on copper. Whatever your preference for silver brightness, you really don’t want shiny arts and crafts copper, so be careful to avoid polishing copper at all with any silver polishing cream or cloth. Using cotton buds can help most accurately keep the polish only on the silver. Simply use a dust cloth for copper.

Polishing kit

As already mentioned, a Goddards cloth is fundamental. I also recommend a toothpick or cocktail sticks. To remove tarnish in hard to get to areas I also recommend cotton buds (Q-tips). Use with polish and then without polish to clean off the residue polish and additional tarnish. Using a stiff toothbrush with polish (eg Silvo) can be appropriate for particularly difficult areas of silver to get to (and for which foam is inappropriate) but use sparingly and infrequently as nylon brushes can damage silver.

I recommend you wear gloves when polishing, both to protect your hands and the piece itself – there is no point in polishing a piece to then leave fingerprints all over it. Personally I find plastic “medical” type gloves best. Cotton gloves can get caught on silver and actual polishing mittens (these contain polish like a Goddard’s cloth) are just too cumbersome for any detailed polishing in my view.

Once you have finished polishing, I recommend wiping the piece with a normal cotton cloth. That will remove residue tarnish and polish.

Conclusion

Most silver pieces are easily and quickly polished. The key is simply not to let them get too tarnished, and not to care too much about removing every last area of tarnish. I would say that I can polish most pieces of my silver in well under a minute. However, for some pieces with stones, difficult shapes or copper you do need to take care and to focus thoughtfully on what you are doing.

Disclaimer

The views expressed below are my personal views. This is an inherently subjective area and you are most welcome to disagree with my recommendations. If you think there are errors in the above do please get in touch. I and The Peartree Collection Limited accept no liability for any damage that may be caused when you are polishing your silver.

The brands referenced in this document are the UK’s leading brands with which I am familiar and directly experienced. If outside the UK you may have to find equivalent local brands.

2024-11-13T13:24:39+00:00November 13, 2024|Guides|

How to Photograph Silver – An Amateur’s Guide

When I first started out as a dealer in antique silver, without doubt the hardest aspect of my new career was photography. I tried using professional photographers but they were expensive, involved frustrating delays and ultimately took photos that I was not very happy with.

It turns out photographing silver is just about the hardest thing to do in the world of photography. It requires a specialist professional photographer – not easy to find. It is not just the myriad of reflections you have to deal with, but getting silver to look like clean shiny silver in a photograph is in fact very tricky.

Over the past five years I have crawled up, as well as down, the learning curve. I have reached the point where I am finally satisfied with most of my photographs. By popular demand, and with the time and boredom created by “lock-down”, I thought I would share my experience with you.

This write up is full of links so that you can see what I mean by clicking on the highlighted blue areas. There is a photo of my set up at the end of this article.

I am still learning, and if anyone would like to offer improvements to this approach, do please let me know.

Equipment needed

  1. You need a decent camera which can zoom and has the fitting to allow remote flash photography. Any Digital SLR will do. I use an oldish Nikon D800.
  2. You need remote strobe flash lighting. Two lights are more than sufficient, I normally only bother with one.
  3. You need a tent. Depending on the size of pieces of silver you are photographing I find something c 60cm square sufficient. Do not get the ones with built in lighting – that won’t be sufficient for silver photography.
  4. Make sure your camera has the right connector (or blue tooth) to connect to the lighting you buy which should come with a long cord to fit to your camera.

Equipment optional

  1. You probably don’t need lighting stands. I find they are cumbersome and take up a lot of space for no great benefit. I just prop my lights against an open draw or wall
  2. A tripod is useful but personally I find my hand is steady enough and the shutter speed fast enough, that the tripod makes little difference to the final photograph. Just another piece of clutter / expense.
  3. Depending on the tent you have, you probably want to find some extra black sheeting so that you can vary the colour inside the tent and white sheeting so that you can cover the open side of the tent (make a hole in the sheet/material for the camera lens).
  4. There are any number of lens filters I have been told will help my photography of silver. I have found most are detrimental, and none helpful.

Camera setting (speed and aperture)

  1. You should probably have the camera set to auto not flash – don’t ask me why but the flash setting on my Nikon at least makes it harder to get a good photo.
  2. The Auto mode you need should use a shutter speed of about 200 (1/200th second exposure – any faster than that and I capture an image of the actual shutter – I suspect a modern camera could go even faster) and an aperture of c F22. F22 is a very small aperture (1/22 – that is smaller than, say, F4 which is a 1/4). This is as fast as I can get with a flash and the smallest aperture. This will minimise the effects of any shake in the camera and ensure a good focal range. ISO is the other variable. I use 4000 (which means the lens is very sensitive/detailed) but in all honesty it seems to make no difference what I use – unlike the speed/aperture settings which make a huge difference.

White balance

  1. What is white balance I hear you say? It only took me three years to figure this out. It turns out it is the most important aspect of taking a good photo of silver. For reasons unclear to me, cameras don’t automatically know what colours/white look like –so white may be a bit grey, a bit blue, a bit yellow/sepia (if you like your porcelain you will know there are many different types of white). Start with auto white balance and see what happens but it may be you have to mess with this function to get good shiny silver photos. I have to shift my Nikon so it reads white as blue white (as opposed to pinky or yellow sepia white), which in turns means it sees silver as shiny, not grey or white etc.
  2. The other aspect of white balance is to make sure that, in the actual photo you are taking, the camera has enough comparative colours to know what colour silver is. If you take a photo of silver on white, the camera may not figure out what is white, what is grey and what is silvery – and you will end up with a very flat grey toned image. So you need to introduce some black into the photo. Often a little in frame that also reflects off the silver is best. Don’t worry about whether the background is consistent – often a bit of black and white in the background is key. I describe below how to cut out the image onto a digital background.

The set up

  1. So place your silver object in the tent, place some black around it, and connect up your lighting. Use auto focus. Point and shoot. Easy.
  2. In fact you are going to want to play around with a number of factors. The lighting should be just over exposed and diffuse in my experience. So I use a thin white cloth I lay over the lighting to varying thicknesses to get that right. If you over expose slightly, then when you photoshop (see below) you can typically get a really good effect. Don’t underexpose.
  3. The direction of your lighting matters. Bouncing the flash off the ceiling, so your flash should be pointing up, tends to work best. But if you are shooting a circular or vertical flat surface (teapots or boxes etc), the light bounces off the silver away from the camera lens, so you may need to more directly point lighting at the face of the object.
  4. Look out for any unwanted reflections off the piece. If you are using a tent, that is open to one side, normally the camera and yourself are the problem. Hence shoot through a sheet with a slit. Or angle the piece and yourself to avoid reflection.
  5. Vary the position of camera so you are showing the piece at the best angle – often a lower view is better than higher.
  6. Sometimes auto-focus won’t be able to focus on silver so use manual focus or focus onto an area of decoration or edge so that the camera can “see” the silver.
  7. Sometimes it helps to sit the object on a clear stand.

Photoshopping

  1. The best advice I ever got was from a photographer who told me my photos were fine but my photoshopping was poor.
  2. Photoshopping is vital to get the realistic effect of shiny silver you are after – it’s not about creating a deceptive photo
  3. Adobe is considered the best and you will need a subscription to access the necessary functionality.
  4. Most photos require no more than a gentle tug on the Adobe curve (a clever device that works contrast, brightness, exposure etc together harmoniously). This should bring the shine to your silver photo.
  5. I only understand about 0.1 per cent of what Adobe Photoshop offers but it seems to be enough.

Background

  1. Your photo should now look very good but it may well be that the background is a mess and/or not the colour you are after.
  2. Hence I recommend you use Clipping Magic (it is partly free, but you may need to subscribe depending on usage).
  3. Clipping Magic is an idiot proof way of cutting out photos onto any background. Simply upload to it and its own programme will probably get you a cut out that is c 90 per cent accurate straight away
  4. You will need to mess around with Clipping Magic’s manual functions a little too perfect your cut out.
  5. Adobe Photoshop has the same facility which I am assured is in fact far better – except for the small detail that I find it impossible to use.
  6. If you want your silver to look modern/exciting a dark background is normally best.

Comparative photos

How to Photograph Silver compartive photo 1
How to Photograph Silver compartive photo 2
How to Photograph Silver compartive photo 3

Example of photo, with black reflection and on dark background

birmingham guild of handicraft metalwork

Birmingham Guild of Handicraft silver dish

Set Up

2024-11-13T11:57:43+00:00November 13, 2024|Guides|
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