Silverplate
In the 1830’s George Richard Elkington and his brother Henry Elkington patented the process for electroplating silver and by the 1840’s had perfected the techniques which were to make them famous. Electroplate or silverplate was a completely different process from Sheffield plate. Instead of fusing two or three pieces of metal together, the process used electricity to deposit pure silver onto a base metal. Various base metals were used but “nickel silver,” an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel, proved to be the best for electroplating.
Close Plate
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Close plating was a craft in which a thin layer of silver was applied to an article made of a base metal, most often iron or steel. Birmingham was the centre of the close plating industry in Britain.
The object was first smoothed and thoroughly cleaned. It was them heated in a charcoal fire and afterwards submerged into first a solution of salt-ammoniac and then into a molten tin. This completed the fusion of the steel and tin and the item was allowed to cool.
