Henry Wilkinson was born in 1788 in Norton Hammer, a village in Southern Yorkshire, some three miles south of Sheffield. Sheffield was already playing an outsized role in England's Industrial Revolution: specifically steel manufacturing, cutlery-making and the production of other metalwares.
At the time Wilkinson was born, silver-plating was only a few decades old. The process of bonding a thin layer of sliver to a copper ingot—and then rolling-it-out into a workable sheet—had been developed and improved in Sheffield. These sheets could then be stamped (in metal forms) to produce cutlery, trays, and all manner of silver-plated wares—commonly called "Sheffield Plate." Later, electroplating would be developed, by which a very thin layer of silver powder would be electrically bonded to a base metal object. Electroplating was even faster and less expensive than the rolled-silver process (though the thinner silver layer made it less durable).
Henry Wilkinson was born into a working family; his father was a file maker. Wilkinson's first work was apprenticing as a scissor smith. But he soon found work with a silver-plate maker. After working in partnership with other Sheffield manufacturers, Wilkinson set-up his own company and, in 1831, registered his own maker's mark. In 1843, the company was the second firm in Sheffield to be granted a license for making electroplated silver. Henry Wilkinson & Company was very successful making all manner of silver-plated household items.
The wine bottle coaster, shown here, is made of a slab of turned mahogany, mounted with a silver-plated gallery and central rondel. It was made in the Fifties by Henry Wilkinson & Company (by now owned by a larger conglomerate). Click on the photo above to learn more about this handsome and useful piece.
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