Object Description
A pair of antique silver casters, or tall peppers, of plain baluster form with detachable pierced tops. Classic style. Hand engraved to each is the crest of a lion.
Total weight 263 grams, 8.4 troy ounces.
Height 15cm.
London 1748.
Maker Samuel Wood.
Sterling silver.
Marks. Stamped with a full and matching set of English silver hallmarks under each body, the tops are stamped on the rim with the lion and makers mark.
SAMUEL WOOD
Samuel Wood (c.1704-1794), apprenticed to Thomas Bamford 1721, free 1730. First mark entered as largeworker, 1733. Second mark circa 1738. Third mark 1739. Fourth mark entered 1754. Fifth mark 1756. Warden 1758-60, and Prime Warden 1763. Through his apprenticeship to Thomas Bamford, who had been bound to Charles Adam, Wood came of a continuous line of specialist caster-makers and in turn trained both Jabez Daniell and Robert Piercey (q.v.), both clearly established also in the same line of production. Wood’s cruets and individual casters, although produced in quantity are of a uniformly high standard and one of the most attractively designed smaller items of plate, without which no reasonably equipped table of the eighteenth century appears to have been complete.