I. Franks, Vaults 9, 11, 13, and 15
I. Franks, established here in 1958, is the biggest company in the Silver Vaults. Now in its fourth generation of the family and with 75 years of experience in the silver trade, the company has an amazing variety of tea pieces laid out in glass cabinets around their showroom. As Daniel Franks explains, “Tea is enjoyed by people all over the world, so there’s always a market for silver teawares. Europeans love Georgian teapots and other tea-related pieces made between 1714 and 1837. Americans have always been strong buyers of silver, and even if footfall is down, we sell a lot to the US online. We have a number of American clients and find that Americans from different areas want different items— for example, New Yorkers tend to like plainer, simpler pieces, while Texans love more elaborate designs.”
Daniel also talks of clients who, “like to buy tea from English companies but sometimes have difficulties getting that through customs on their way home. So, if they buy silver from us, they sometimes ask us to pack the tea inside the silver teawares!” I. Franks has a similar range of teawares as David Shure, including one or two small-scale, silver “bachelor teapots;” elegant three-tiered cake stands; very fine sugar baskets with pierced and engraved decoration and a glass liner; silver baskets for serving scones and other teatime treats; and dainty little silver bells that wealthy ladies would ring to summon their butler or maid when tea was required. One of Daniel’s favourite pieces is a beautiful “tea machine” that was designed with a large central urn to hold hot water for brewing (rather like a samovar) and two smaller vessels, one on each side of the large central receptacle, which were intended for brewing two different teas. Each vessel has a tap for delivering hot water or brewed tea into the cup. There are so many more gorgeous tea things here that it really is hard to leave and move on to the next vault.
