Lost Trades Nᵒ.15: John Wilkes' Beautiful Locks & 'keys so finely wrought'

Birmingham made 'detector' lock from c. 1680.
V&A Collections.

This brass lock was made in Birmingham in about 1680 by John Wilkes and is a fascinating piece in seventeenth-century technology in being able to record how may times it has been opened through the turning of the numbered dial. It would therefore ward off any potential thieves and would have been of great benefit to any business with employees. On the front are written the lines:

If I had ye gift of tongue 
I would declare and do no wrong 
Who ye are ye come by stealth 
To impare my Master's wealth.

Birmingham Button Box: Country Life in Transfer Printed Enamel (c. 1760s)

Object Focus: Four buttons from what would have been a larger set of gentlemen's buttons depicting hunting scenes. Above a gentleman leans on his horse with his hunting dogs around, and below are images of the hunt.  

Metal Things: The Silver Work of Samuel Pemberton (c. 1704-1836)

Samuel Pemberton silver toothpick case, 1793.

Held at Birmingham Assay Office.

There were at least three generations of Samuel Pemberton's working as jewellers, toymakers and silversmiths in Birmingham in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries, possibly fathers and sons, but if not, they were likely extended family.* The first lived from about 1704 to 1784, the second from 1738 to 1803, and the third from about 1771 to 1836. It is the two latter whose silver survives in museums and private collections (see more of their silver on Pinterest).