A William and Mary sterling silver tankard, London 1691 by John Jackson (free 1681, died 1716)

of slightly tapering cylindrical form with moulded slightly flared foot. The plain scroll handle leading to a stepped flat lid raised by a scroll thumbpiece, the front of lid with shaped apron. The body later decorated with three chased bands of fluting between courses of punched pellets against a matted ground. The underside of the handle with a stylised chased leaf, the front with a chased scroll cartouche, with an engraved impaled coat of arms, traces of contemporaneous foliate mantling surrounding. The lid with similar chased fluting an courses of pellets, centered with a flat chased rosette. Fully marked near to rim, to lid in front of thumbpiece and with makers marks only to handle. The underside with scratch weight 32 =13.

Height – 19.2 cm / 7.5 inches

Weight – 1011 grams / 32.5 ozt

The arms are Eyre impaling Fitzmorris or Morris

This mark attributed by Sir Charles Jackson (1921), Timothy Schroder (2009) and David Mitchell (2017)

John Jackson was the son of William Jackson of East Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, and was apprenticed to Richard Dransfield for seven years from the 10th October 1674. He was then turned over to John Spackman after 1st September 1676, who was a plate worker, himself free of Roger Stevens. Jackson registered his mark in 1684. In the 1692 Poll Tax, he was in St Dunstan as with a wife and two servants.

The probate of John Jackson demonstrates the position that the head of a workshop such as Jackson’s held domestically. The four story house at The Angel near Water Lane, Fleet Street, had furniture and linen valued at £91, “[t}he dining room had a table with eight chairs on the first floor, together with the best chamber furnished with ‘a crimson harateen bed lined with satin, a quilt of the same and six Dutch chairs’. On the next two floors were four chamber with bed hangings of serge, camlet and printed fabric.” Mitchell, D., Silversmiths in Elizabethan and Stuart London: their lives and their marks, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, (2017), p.377.

Other tankards recorded by Jackson

1685 – Christie’s 1919

1689 – Christie’s 1925

1690 – Ashmolean Museum, Schroder 2009, No 36

1690 – The Chomley Tankard, Christie’s 1963

1691 – Christie’s 1927

1694 – Christie’s 1920

1694 – Peg tankard, Parke Bernet New York, 1951 / Sotheby’s New York, 3 Nov 2004, Lot 283 ($4,182 incl. premim)

1699 – Bonham’s New Bond Street, 21 Nov 2007, Lot 293 (£6,240 incl. premium)