c1880's Allen & Darwin Boxed Nutcracker/Grape Shears/Serving spoon set Sheffield Silver plated. Really nice set, appears unused, box appears to have had a harder
life for the past 120 years or so. These are all hand engraved, the nut cracker
handles fold all the way over so they can be used both ways, not sure why.
The handles of the Grape Shears are much longer than the blades, so that you can
insert the blades deeply into a cluster of grapes. Most of the scissor ends of
these pieces of antique silver have blunt tips, so that they won’t puncture the
fruit.
The grape shears would sometimes be found as part of a set with a grapestand,
and the earlier grape shears from the late Georgian period were more like
scissors, with equally long blades and handles. These were often gold-gilt,
demonstrating the high value that the grape shears had been imbued with as an
item of cutlery, and as part of a dinner service. Later though, grape shears
were usually made of sterling silver, as with most high quality dinnerware, so
as to avoid tarnishing and to stand the test of time.
After the 1850s, most of the shears produced included a flange which had been
added to one of the blades, so that once the grapes had been cut, they could
then be elegantly placed on to the diner’s plate while still holding the shears.
The decoration on the shears varied widely, at first the shears often displayed
a grape and vine motif, however many grape shears were part of a much larger
dining set, so they would be embellished with the same pattern that was on the
other cutlery. Because so many pieces of various shapes and sizes had to
incorporate the same design, these were often more simple than the decoration on
single items.
