THE TICKTUM COLLECTION

At first sight this would seem to be a surprising area of collecting in the East of England especially as we have no family connections whatever with Scotland. However we have been collecting for a long time and the prices of Scottish Provincial have not always been at the levels they are today. It is only quite recently that the strong interest in this field has developed almost certainly as a result of the research and literature which has been published over the last ten years.

For a long time in the seventies and eighties items came up in significant numbers at the local auctions here, mostly unrecognised and costing just a few pounds. There is an interesting theory as to why this might be the case. Most Scottish Provincial is very late 18th century but mainly 19th and this was the time of the rise of the Herring fishing industry. Due to migration etc the trawlers started the season in the Moray Firth area following the shoals down the East Coast finally working out of Yarmouth and Lowestoft at the end of the season. It was very much a feast and famine operation and the story goes that the skippers pawned family items including silver if the season was bad in order to be able to return home to Scotland. Whether the idea has credence is obviously a matter of opinion, but there did at one time seem to be proportionately more items than one would expect in an area such as this one.

Today one sees very few although they do still turn up on occasions, but with greater knowledge and the wider distribution of information on items up for sale via the Internet etc, they only slip through unnoticed very rarely.

For ease of reference we have divided this chapter into four sub-sections, with the first solely relating to Edinburgh. Our examples are representative rather than special, and we have nothing of real rarity or importance.

The second sub-section covers what to us are the main provincial marking locations. Again there are representative examples from each location, the only real rarity being the Aberdeen Hanoverian with the Three Castles mark for A Forbes.

With the third sub-section one starts to find that the items are becoming quite scarce and it is much more difficult today to put together a representative sample across the board. We have however managed to obtain examples for most of the locations which fall into this category and some items are bordering on the rare.

The final sub-section covers the really obscure locations some of which are conjectural since their ascription’s keep changing i.e. Ross (Dingwall), St Andrews (with the Cross) Cupar. The clearly identified locations are all rare to varying degrees, with the Peterhead teaspoon being probably the rarest of all our Scottish spoons. Not surprisingly it is also the section where most of the gaps occur i.e. Wick, Fochabers, Stranraer and Ellon. It is doubtful if they will ever come our way given their cost in today’s market unless they appear unrecognised.

This is not an area of collecting that we have ever pursued with vigour and that is undoubtedly the way it will be in the future. Very few of the items were deliberately acquired as a collecting policy. If something comes to our attention locally which fills a gap then we would probably try to acquire it, but in general terms this part of the collection is pretty much complete.