Main Content
Summary
Author: B(adcock), W(illiam)
Title: A touch-stone for gold and silver wares. Or, a manual for goldsmiths, and all other persons, whether buyers, sellers, or wearers of any manner of goldsmiths work. Discovering the rules belonging to that mystery ... together with the several statutes now in force ... to which is annexed the laws in force against brass hilts, and brass buckles, &. and directions for discovering the counterfeit coyn of this kingdom (etc). By W.B. of London, goldsmith.
Publication: London, "printed for John Bellinger in Clifford-Inn Lane, and Thomas Bassett at the George near Cliffords-Inne in Fleet Street" 1677.
Price: Sold
Reference: 11500
Full Description
8vo. Engraved frontispiece, (28) + 115 + (1)pp, 1 engraved plate. Contemporary full calf, neatly rebacked. From the library of the Earls of Macclesfield, with engraved Macclesfield armorial bookplate dated 1860, and embossed armorial Macclesfield blind-stamp at top of frontispiece and first three leaves (as usual with books from this library).
Scarce first edition of this helpful guide to the English legal statutes and Goldsmiths' Company regulations relating to the fineness, marking and assaying of items of gold and silver plate. It benefits from the fact that the author was himself a working goldsmith (although not himself a member of the Goldsmiths' Company), and he even goes to the trouble of providing engraved illustrations of the folding sheet of paper customarily provided to customers by the Goldsmiths' Company's own assayer to show the fineness of gold and silver plate brought to him for assaying. An emended version under a slightly different title followed in 1679. Wing 381.