September 3rd 2012                                                              

Next club meeting Monday 1st October 2012.

Meetings are held at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.

 

NOTICES

 

 

August Meeting

 

Luke Schrager’s presentation of 3 September 2012 was about the life of John Kirk (1730-1778). There were 28 members present.

 

Although John Kirk never worked for the Royal Mint, the techniques he used and his work demonstrated the link between coins, medals, seals and engraving. His output ranged from a Cornelian seal intaglio of George III in the Royal Collection, to tokens of a similar date given away with a magazine (the first time the idea of a collectible series appears to have been tried).

 

However, the surviving genealogical records do not make a clear distinction between John Kirk and his family easy, due primarily to the similarity of names and initials. John Kirk was the son of another John Kirk - a London Citizen and Goldsmith of St. Paul’s Churchyard, who died in 1762. John Kirk (II) was born in 1730 and became a pupil of John Dassier, the prominent medallist. He is recorded as paying rates in Russell Street, near Covent Garden, from 1756-1768, and died in 1778, when he was cited as an engraver.

 

He worked in many media and techniques: paper, wax, gem stones and, most importantly, metal. But it is complicated. There is a medal (1746) commemorating the Battle of Culloden signed by A. and J. Kirk. This could be an early work of John Kirk and his elder brother, Alexander (b. 1729). However, as he would have been young to be in a partnership- it could be the senior John Kirk and his elder son. This situation is complicated by an engraving of a goldsmith’s workshop dated 1743 by A. and J. Kirk commissioned by the Goldsmiths’ Company, which states that it is by Alexander Kirk (aged 14) and John Kirk (aged 13). Although listed as an engraver, John Kirk did follow the trade taught to him by John Dassier, as shown in Dassier’s ‘Medals of the Sovereigns of England’ (1773) where the plate of Queen Charlotte is signed by Kirk. 

 

In 1754 John Kirk was proposed as punch engraver to the London Assay Office. He received commissions from the Royal Society of Arts to engrave its seal (just as he did for the Grand Lodge of Antients and The Duke of Atholl Lodge in 1774). He also created an armorial badge for the Cooks’ Company that was cast in silver and in use into the nineteenth century. According to Eimer, the Kirk family produced 68 medals between 1744 and 1778 (29% of those made in London in the eighteenth century),

 

John Kirk also produced coin weights. He may have also retailed them, and may have made scales for use with them. Cases are found with his engraved trade card pasted into the lid. He also produced weights for foreign coins that were being traded in England, including the ‘Portuguese Joe’ and the ‘half moidore or 13s 6d’. The use of Portuguese currency was prevalent in England throughout the eighteenth century.

 

Kirk produced tokens advertising businesses - striking for ‘Low’s Grand Hotel’ in Covent Garden, the first family hotel in London. The building still stands but is now the flagship branch of L. K. Bennett. When the hotel opened three versions of this token were struck - gold for the Royal family, silver for the nobility and bronze for the gentry.

 

Kirk produced a series of brass tokens in 1773-1774 ‘a collectible series of objects’ for the Sentimental Magazine, with each number of the magazine (described in the Bath advertiser of March 29th 1773, as: A NEW MAGAZINE, With every Number of which will be given a curious MEDAL, struck on fine Metal, about the Size and Weight of a Guinea, executed by Mr. KIRKE, in the The SENTIMENTAL MAGAZINE Or, GENERAL ASSEMBLAGE of SCIENCE, TASTE and ENTERTAINMENT. Over time, thirteen medals were issued. The end of the series seems to date from around the time of the departure of the first editor, George Kearsley, who is most famous for his editorship of the North Briton, number 45 of which caused his arrest and that of MP John Wilkes for Seditious Libel of the King. He was replaced by John Coote until publication ceased in 1777.

 

When he died he left his personal estate and the lease on the shop to his widow Ann, and bequests of £30 to his cousin Mary Bather Junior, who was his shop-woman, and £10 ‘for decent mourning’ to his niece Sarah Stamper, shopkeeper of Rickmansworth. It is probable that this is the shop formerly occupied by John Kirk Senior. The sheer range of subject matter and media covered by John Kirk during his life time has justified his appearance in the Dictionary of National Biography but there is much more to find out - and Luke hopes to do so in the future.

 

The issues raised in the talk led to an extensive question and answer session, after which Club members gave a vote of thanks and encouragement to continue the research.

 

Past Events

 

 

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