https://thepewter.co What it was made for, and what it's still good for. en-US Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://thepewter.co/post/a-pair-of-rosewood-opera-glasses-re-collimated/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-pair-of-rosewood-opera-glasses-re-collimated/ Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost restorations A pair of Lemaire of Paris opera glasses, c. 1880, came into a small optical workshop in Vienna with mother-of-pearl losses, misaligned prisms, and a velvet case that had not been opened in fifty years. https://thepewter.co/post/specialist-clock-sale-in-massachusetts/ https://thepewter.co/post/specialist-clock-sale-in-massachusetts/ Sat, 13 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Ellis Mauro fairs-and-auctions One afternoon at a single-discipline clock auction in Marlborough, where the bidders all know each other and the catalogue is a working census. https://thepewter.co/post/the-bone-folder-and-the-paper-conservators-hand/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-bone-folder-and-the-paper-conservators-hand/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Quinn Faraday tools A small tongue of polished bone, shaped like a flattened spoon, is the most-used object on the bench of a paper conservator working in a Glasgow studio. https://thepewter.co/post/a-collection-of-american-trade-cards-1880-1905/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-collection-of-american-trade-cards-1880-1905/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost collections In a third-floor apartment in Chicago, the retired graphic designer Henry Carmichael has assembled 6,318 American trade cards from the chromolithography boom of 1880 to 1905. https://thepewter.co/post/bookbinder-bristol-stokes-croft/ https://thepewter.co/post/bookbinder-bristol-stokes-croft/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd workshop-visits Eleri Penrose rebinds, repairs, and conserves cloth and leather books from a shopfront on Picton Street. On a Monday in June she rebacks an 1879 family Bible. https://thepewter.co/post/longcase-clock-dial-and-movement-makers-marks/ https://thepewter.co/post/longcase-clock-dial-and-movement-makers-marks/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Ellis Mauro markings An eight-day longcase clock arrived at Ellis Mauro's Berlin workshop in March, sent down from a private estate in Lübeck. The brass dial bore the engraved name Thomas Mudge, London; the movement, on inspection, told a more complicated story. https://thepewter.co/post/the-right-storage-for-antique-textiles/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-right-storage-for-antique-textiles/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd care Helga Schoenfeld's eighty-four quilts, the rolled-tube method, and the case against cedar chests for anything you actually want to keep. https://thepewter.co/post/online-only-decorative-arts-sale/ https://thepewter.co/post/online-only-decorative-arts-sale/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost fairs-and-auctions Three days of bidding on a regional auction house's online sale, where the lot numbers run to twelve hundred and the room is a webcam. https://thepewter.co/post/the-cookbook-with-six-marginalia/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-cookbook-with-six-marginalia/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost provenance An 1861 first edition of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, found in a Charleston estate, traced through six women's annotations across a hundred and twenty years to a single Charleston kitchen. https://thepewter.co/post/an-english-pembroke-table-with-a-split-leaf/ https://thepewter.co/post/an-english-pembroke-table-with-a-split-leaf/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd restorations A George III mahogany Pembroke table, c. 1785, came into a Hudson workshop with a leaf split along the grain and a finish that had been waxed for two centuries. The work of repairing it took eleven weeks. https://thepewter.co/post/the-bench-that-pays-for-itself/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-bench-that-pays-for-itself/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd tools A custom-built oak bench in a Vermont workshop took six months to build and has lasted twenty-three years. The owner has worked out, roughly, how much it has earned per square inch. https://thepewter.co/post/the-quiet-archive-of-american-rural-photography/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-quiet-archive-of-american-rural-photography/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd collections Outside Fayetteville, Arkansas, the retired schoolteacher Estelle Crane has spent twenty-six years assembling 11,200 anonymous American snapshots from rural life between 1910 and 1955. https://thepewter.co/post/decoy-carver-eastern-shore-maryland/ https://thepewter.co/post/decoy-carver-eastern-shore-maryland/ Sun, 31 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost workshop-visits Walter Brimm restores Susquehanna Flats and Chesapeake working decoys from a shed behind his house in Havre de Grace, Maryland. On a morning in June he refinishes a 1936 Madison Mitchell pintail. https://thepewter.co/post/county-antique-fair-in-vermont/ https://thepewter.co/post/county-antique-fair-in-vermont/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost fairs-and-auctions A Saturday at the Lamoille County Antique Show, where seventy dealers fill a 4-H barn and the trade is unmistakably local. https://thepewter.co/post/cleaning-gilded-frames-without-touching-the-gold/ https://thepewter.co/post/cleaning-gilded-frames-without-touching-the-gold/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd care A nineteenth-century water-gilded frame in a Chicago apartment, the difference between gilding and gilt paint, and why a soft brush is the entire toolkit. https://thepewter.co/post/the-silver-spoon-stamped-three-times/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-silver-spoon-stamped-three-times/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cyrus Peake provenance A George III silver dessert spoon with three sets of marks — Edinburgh assay, maker, and a tiny owner's mark added later — traced from a 1791 Edinburgh silversmith to a Glasgow merchant family and finally to a Glasgow charity shop. https://thepewter.co/post/the-jewelers-loupe-and-the-restorers-eye/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-jewelers-loupe-and-the-restorers-eye/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cyrus Peake tools A ten-times loupe and forty years of looking through one: a Sheffield silversmith on the small lens that has shaped his trade. https://thepewter.co/post/a-federal-tall-case-clock-re-leathered-and-re-cased/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-federal-tall-case-clock-re-leathered-and-re-cased/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Ellis Mauro restorations A cherrywood tall-case clock signed Levi Hutchins, c. 1798, came into a Hudson workshop with a split case, a fatigued bellows leather, and a brass dial that had not been touched in eighty years. https://thepewter.co/post/irish-silver-marks-dublin-and-cork/ https://thepewter.co/post/irish-silver-marks-dublin-and-cork/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd markings A Dublin silver beaker dated 1796 came up at a small Galway auction last June, marked with the crowned harp of the Dublin assay office, a maker's mark JL for John Locker, and a small Hibernia figure that fixes its origin beyond doubt. https://thepewter.co/post/forty-years-of-fountain-pens-one-collector-in-portland/ https://thepewter.co/post/forty-years-of-fountain-pens-one-collector-in-portland/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost collections Lillian Yoshimoto of Portland, Oregon has assembled 814 fountain pens manufactured between 1888 and 1965. She uses about fifteen of them in regular rotation. https://thepewter.co/post/silversmith-restorer-sheffield-attercliffe/ https://thepewter.co/post/silversmith-restorer-sheffield-attercliffe/ Sun, 24 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cyrus Peake workshop-visits Oonagh Tindall works on Victorian and Edwardian silver from a small workshop in a former cutlery factory. On a Friday in May she repairs a damaged Walker and Hall tea service. https://thepewter.co/post/bermondsey-square-friday-morning/ https://thepewter.co/post/bermondsey-square-friday-morning/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cyrus Peake fairs-and-auctions Five a.m. in south London, where the oldest open-air antiques market in the city still trades by torchlight and a particular legal history hangs over the stalls. https://thepewter.co/post/leather-book-bindings-and-the-red-rot-question/ https://thepewter.co/post/leather-book-bindings-and-the-red-rot-question/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Quinn Faraday care A 19th-century theological library in a Boston rectory, the powdery decay that conservators call red rot, and the four interventions that work. https://thepewter.co/post/the-portrait-miniature-in-a-norfolk-attic/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-portrait-miniature-in-a-norfolk-attic/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost provenance A watercolour-on-ivory portrait, three inches by two and a half, found in a biscuit tin in a Cromer attic, identified from a barely legible inscription as a 1798 likeness of a Norwich merchant's wife. https://thepewter.co/post/a-pewter-collection-built-from-house-clearances/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-pewter-collection-built-from-house-clearances/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd collections Over thirty-eight years, the Edinburgh ironmonger Hamish Brae has built a pewter collection of 1,140 pieces, almost entirely from house clearances within forty miles of his shop. https://thepewter.co/post/the-cabinet-scrapers-quiet-edge/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-cabinet-scrapers-quiet-edge/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Ellis Mauro tools Before sandpaper was a household item, a small rectangle of hardened steel did most of the smoothing in a furniture workshop. It still does, in the workshops that know how to sharpen one. https://thepewter.co/post/victorian-electroplate-marks-and-what-they-tell-you/ https://thepewter.co/post/victorian-electroplate-marks-and-what-they-tell-you/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cyrus Peake markings An Edwardian tea pot from a Bristol estate sale, picked up for twenty-two pounds in February, carried the impressed letters EPNS beneath the maker's mark of James Dixon & Sons. The four letters do not denote silver, and yet the piece is worth more than its weight in silver would suggest. https://thepewter.co/post/a-1912-singer-treadle-returned-to-stitch/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-1912-singer-treadle-returned-to-stitch/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cyrus Peake restorations A black-japanned Singer Model 27, in its original quarter-sawn oak cabinet, came in with a frozen handwheel and a stripped belt. The work of bringing it back, mostly with parts still in production. https://thepewter.co/post/polishing-brass-without-stripping-the-patina/ https://thepewter.co/post/polishing-brass-without-stripping-the-patina/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Ellis Mauro care A Chelsea Clock Company eight-day ship's bell clock, brought back over five months by a Cape Cod horologist with rouge, a soft mop, and patience. https://thepewter.co/post/a-georgian-tea-caddy-with-a-london-customs-stamp/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-georgian-tea-caddy-with-a-london-customs-stamp/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cyrus Peake provenance A 1786 mahogany tea caddy, found in a Kent estate sale, identified by a small customs stamp inside the lid and traced to the household of a London linen-draper who recorded its purchase in his daybook. https://thepewter.co/post/barometer-restorer-cotswolds/ https://thepewter.co/post/barometer-restorer-cotswolds/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd workshop-visits Cedric Halsall has rebuilt mercury stick barometers in a converted dairy near Stow-on-the-Wold for twenty-six years. On a morning in May, he refits the cistern on a Negretti and Zambra of 1881. https://thepewter.co/post/a-private-collection-of-stereographs-8400-cards/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-private-collection-of-stereographs-8400-cards/ Thu, 14 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost collections In a converted dairy barn in Mendocino County, California, Marcus Olwen has spent forty-one years assembling one of the largest privately held stereograph collections in the American West. https://thepewter.co/post/the-anchor-and-the-bow-chelsea-porcelain-marks/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-anchor-and-the-bow-chelsea-porcelain-marks/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd markings A small Chelsea cup, decorated with a kingfisher on a branch, was offered at Bonhams last March with a presale estimate of seven hundred pounds. The single mark on its underside — a small red anchor, no more than three millimetres tall — pushed the eventual hammer price to eleven thousand. https://thepewter.co/post/a-french-polishers-bench-whats-on-it-and-why/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-french-polishers-bench-whats-on-it-and-why/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Quinn Faraday tools In a basement workshop in Edinburgh, a polisher with forty-one years at the work keeps a bench whose contents have changed less than three times in her career. https://thepewter.co/post/a-19th-century-cigar-store-indian-conserved-not-restored/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-19th-century-cigar-store-indian-conserved-not-restored/ Sun, 10 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd restorations A polychrome carved figure attributed to the Robb workshop of New York, c. 1872, came into a private conservation studio in Hudson with most of its original paint surviving. The decision was to leave it alone. https://thepewter.co/post/saturday-at-brimfield-antique-show/ https://thepewter.co/post/saturday-at-brimfield-antique-show/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost fairs-and-auctions Eight hours on the J & J field at Brimfield, where the gates open at six and the serious buyers have already walked the rows by eight. https://thepewter.co/post/humidity-control-for-a-small-private-library/ https://thepewter.co/post/humidity-control-for-a-small-private-library/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Quinn Faraday care A 2,800-volume private library in a converted New Hampshire schoolhouse, a hygrometer logbook since 2018, and the case against the basement. https://thepewter.co/post/the-brass-case-mark-on-a-daguerreotype/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-brass-case-mark-on-a-daguerreotype/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost provenance A sixth-plate Civil War daguerreotype of a Union infantryman, identified from a small mark stamped into the brass mat, traced to a corporal of the 14th Connecticut Volunteers killed at Antietam. https://thepewter.co/post/paper-conservator-edinburgh/ https://thepewter.co/post/paper-conservator-edinburgh/ Fri, 08 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Quinn Faraday workshop-visits Una MacBeath conserves manuscripts, maps, and personal letters from a top-floor studio in Stockbridge. On a Wednesday in May she treats a water-damaged 1842 sheriff's ledger from Inverness-shire. https://thepewter.co/post/a-single-collector-cookbook-archive-1880-1950/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-single-collector-cookbook-archive-1880-1950/ Wed, 06 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost collections Eunice Tarr of Providence, Rhode Island has assembled 3,612 American cookbooks published between 1880 and 1950. She has read about half of them and has cooked from about two hundred. https://thepewter.co/post/porcelain-marks-meissen-sevres-and-worcester/ https://thepewter.co/post/porcelain-marks-meissen-sevres-and-worcester/ Tue, 05 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd markings Three porcelain plates lie side by side on a felt-covered table in Hester Lloyd's office in Hudson, New York. The first carries crossed swords in underglaze blue. The second, two interlaced Ls. The third, a crescent moon. Each mark is older than two centuries. https://thepewter.co/post/the-auction-house-catalogue-as-a-research-tool/ https://thepewter.co/post/the-auction-house-catalogue-as-a-research-tool/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost tools A run of Christie's spring decorative-arts catalogues from 1962 to 2024 sits on a shelf in Amsterdam. The pages, more than the prices, are what one collector consults. https://thepewter.co/post/english-country-house-sale/ https://thepewter.co/post/english-country-house-sale/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd fairs-and-auctions Two days at the contents auction of a Georgian house in the Wylye Valley, where a thousand lots are sold from the rooms themselves. https://thepewter.co/post/re-caning-a-chair-seat-by-hand/ https://thepewter.co/post/re-caning-a-chair-seat-by-hand/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd care Hettie Vance has re-caned chairs in the same Vermont workshop since 1981. A 1925 American side chair and the seven-step pattern, observed. https://thepewter.co/post/a-welsh-chest-four-owners-and-a-pencil-mark/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-welsh-chest-four-owners-and-a-pencil-mark/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd provenance An oak chest of drawers from Carmarthenshire, traced through four named owners across 184 years, with a graphite inscription inside the back panel that closes the chain. https://thepewter.co/post/a-victorian-mourning-brooch-re-set/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-victorian-mourning-brooch-re-set/ Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost restorations A jet-and-hair brooch from 1873, with a damaged bezel and a missing pin, came back through the work of a goldsmith in Manchester and a hair-worker in Norfolk who is one of the last in the trade. https://thepewter.co/post/piano-restorer-berlin-neukolln/ https://thepewter.co/post/piano-restorer-berlin-neukolln/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Ellis Mauro workshop-visits Sigrid Vohwinkel restrings, refelts, and reactions German uprights in a courtyard workshop off Hermannstraße. On a Saturday in April, she finishes a 1908 Blüthner. https://thepewter.co/post/wedgwood-date-codes-1860-to-1929/ https://thepewter.co/post/wedgwood-date-codes-1860-to-1929/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Beatrix Joost markings A blue jasperware vase came into Beatrix Joost's attention last May, marked on the underside with the impressed letters WED beside three smaller capitals, M, B, and F. The three letters, read in sequence, place the vase to August 1881 with no ambiguity. https://thepewter.co/post/a-one-room-museum-of-american-carpenters-tools/ https://thepewter.co/post/a-one-room-museum-of-american-carpenters-tools/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hester Lloyd collections In a converted icehouse outside Brattleboro, Vermont, Wendell Strauss has built what may be the most complete private collection of American carpenter's hand planes between 1840 and 1925. https://thepewter.co/post/newark-flea-market-at-sunrise/ https://thepewter.co/post/newark-flea-market-at-sunrise/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Ellis Mauro fairs-and-auctions Six in the morning on a cold Sunday in April, when the dealers are still unloading and the picker culture of the New York metro area is fully visible.