I've never really been a collector of anything. I have lots of books, and have acquired a few Civil War articles but I don't consider that as collecting, not like people who have accumulated oodles of stamps, shot glasses, Coke memorabilia or key rings. That sort of changed when I bought a pitcher and two goblets dated 1880 and engraved with the initials CC. Being 140 years old appealed to my sense of history, and I've always been fascinated with anything silver. The goblets polished up beautifully - the pitcher was a disaster so I let it go back to it's tarnished condition, which surprisingly took only a couple of months. Somewhere in this blog I wrote a post about that set so I won't go any further with that subject except to say that it did inspire me to see if collecting goblets might be a fun and interesting thing to do.
The first thing I did was to give some thought to what I meant by goblet. The criteria I came up with was first, the goblet had to be metal and preferably silver. Engraved and jewel encrusted would be a plus, like the goblets I envisioned King Arthur and the boys swilling ale from at the round table. Secondly, the goblet must be of a certain age. In the antique world anything older than 40 years is considered vintage but that makes me vintage x 2 and I refuse to acknowledge anything made in 1981 (or 71 or 61 or 51 or 41) as old, so I settled on pre-1940.
Armed with my requirements I started haunting antique shops in earnest. The first thing I discovered was that there are not a lot of metal goblets in antique shops. Glass yes, plastic yes, wood yes, but not metal. In my eagerness to start a collection I quickly lost my focus. Without realizing what I was doing I started purchasing any metal, silver-plated bowl shaped vessel I came across, regardless of size or intended usage. As of three months ago my collection consisted of six legitimate goblets meeting my criteria and nine other items ranging from sherbet goblets to I-don't-know-what.
Many of my 'mistakes' have already gone to Goodwill and the remaining five in the above photo will follow them as I find real goblets to replace them. The good news is that my most recent purchase of two days ago is sitting on the shelf directly beneath the pitcher.
This is what I had in mind when I started collecting. It's not jewel encrusted but you can't have everything. Examining it in the shop there was no indication of where or when it was made or by who. Stamped on the bottom is a trademark I had never seen that appeared at first to my old eyes be Asian. I passed on it the first time I saw it, but a week later when it was still there I bought it. It took a few hour's worth of research to identify the stamp and when I did I was surprised.
The figure on the left is the town symbol of Edinburgh, Scotland. The two middle figures are supposedly the first and last initials of the manufacturer. I have not been able to identify them so far. The same stamp on an antique website claims they represent Carrington & Co. of Edinburgh. I am not convinced. The figure on the right is a date symbol indicating the goblet was manufactured in either 1893 or 1894. I will enjoy the coming hours of trying to identify the manufacturer, but if I never do I am content knowing where and when it was made.
If the predicted storms hold off I'm going to grill some burgers on the wood grill later this afternoon and accompany them with some ale from my new goblet. King Arthur would approve.
