The best way to learn about silver is to see it and, most importantly, to handle it.
Museums. See links for a selection of museums with a good collection of silver, but there are of course hundreds of others. Some museums occasionally hold sessions when it is possible to learn through handling.
Dealers, fairs and auction houses. It is always possible to handle items for sale. See ’Where to buy silver’ and ’Contemporary’ on this site.
Cathedral treasuries. Many cathedrals have installed treasuries to show their collections of ecclesiastical plate, several of which in Britain have been funded by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.
Special exhibitions. There are usually a small number of special exhibitions each year devoted to silver, in addition to which silver regularly features as part of exhibitions with a broad-ranging title or related subject matter.
Selection of relevant articles in back issues of the Society’s Journal:
Most issues have a small listing of objects recently acquired by museums.
Timothy Schroder, Silver and the Church, no17 (2005)
Martin Ellis, Collecting contemporary silver at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, no16 (2004)
Jackie Richardson, First day cup returns to Sheffield Assay Office, no16 (2004)
Tracey Albainy, Hanoverian royal plate in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no14 (2002)
Nicholas Dolan, Newcastle silver in the collection of the Laing Art Gallery, no9 (1997)
Hugh Tait, The Wyndham ewer and basin and subsequent additions to Tudor and Stuart silver plate at the British Museum, no5 (1994)
Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti, Medici mounted hardstone vessels in the Pitti Palace, no5 (1994)
Beth Carver Wees, English silver in an American museum, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, no4 (1993)
Eleanor Thompson, French silver in the Musée du Louvre, no2 (1991)
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Photo: The Holburne Museum of Art, Bath.