HOUSEHOLD SILVER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19218, 8 July 1924, Page 8

HOUSEHOLD SILVER.

DISAPPEARING FROM GREATEST HOMeS. Long thorugh its other uses are likely to continue, silver is losing its former popularity as a material of ornament, for the good reason that there is no one to keep it clean (says The Times). Hired labour is too costly to bo employed by any but tne most fortunate in polishing without end, and submissive daughters, willing to spend -no greater part of their lives with plate-powder, brush, and chamois leather, now, like Lincoln in the play,. belong to the ages.” Though we dare not regret the polishers’ emancipation, it, is perhaps pardonable, before tho last silver salt cellar is banished from the dinner tables of England, to look back upon the old display, and to remember its comfortable shining. With the decay of Victorian prosperity, silver may have grown thiner, but its tradition was bravely maintained. The granddaughters of the Trafalgar ladies liked uieir hair brushes to glitter with the heads of Sir Joshua’s angels; their prayer-books and hymn-books wore bound in perilous filigree; they put up brackets between a couple of Japanese fans) on which the heroes of South Africa were immortalised in silver statuettes; and their dressing tables were gay wilii 100 trinkets that shone again every Wednesday, and perhaps every Saturday morning. • Yet further progres of democracy carried silver into tho humblest homes, where attenuated vases, conspicuously hall marked, gave gentility to the wall (lower and distinction to the pea. , All are gone, or will soon be going. The kingly tureen, which, by reason of its extreme weight, James had so much difficulty in carrying with appropriate nonchalance, has gone with James; his padded calves will support that burden no more. The vase, the statuette, and the filigree prayerbook have been thrown to the dealers. Even tho rose bowl, which in its rich flut-mg-s used to reflect tho surroundings flush of mahogany, and distort, like a mocking glass, t.ie features of our hungry ancestors, is wdtncirawn into tissue paper, and disdains to have converse with stainless steel. We are all turning to substitutes, and, the uniformity of silver being gone, we reveal ourselves in our choice of them. _ James the Vounger, in those houses which still can find a place for him, is busy with cut glass, silver’s most exquistio understudy. Others rely upon porcelain, or charming pieces of pseudo-majolica collected on their travels. Everywhere the spell of silver is being lifted. No more shall candles gutter in gleaming branches or oceans in a tureen. We are grown at once practical and elegant with a new elegance. Henceforth, by electric light, we shall nibble an olive from an earthenware saucer, and now and then visit a museum or a university to see what a tankard was like.