These are a beautiful pair of early Birmingham sugar tongs. Even though the date letter is a little worn, it can be seen that it is a "E" for 1777/78. This makes the tongs important as we can see that they are made in the "bow" style, from a single piece of silver, rather than being cast or made in three parts. This allows us to be certain that in Birmingham at least, the bow style tongs were being made in 1777. Notice also that the two cast pairs made by Edward Sawyer that are featured on this web-site, are dated either side of this so these tongs were clearly being made at the same time as cast tongs. These tongs are also blessed with a lovely monogram, carefully engraved into the pattern.

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