A William and Mary sterling silver tankard, London 1693 by Alice Noyes (active from 1690)

Of gently tapering cylindrical form with moulded rims, the hollow C scroll handle with flattened shaped cartouche terminal, leading to a sand cast twin corkscrew thumbpiece. The flat top lid with overhang edge and shaped front. The handle with engraved initials P over T A with estoiles between and around. Fully marked to right of handle and in front of thumbpiece of lid.

Height – 17 cm / 6.7 inches

Weight – 724 grams / 23.28 ozt

Alice Noyes, who has two marks attributed to her that were later struck on the 1682 mark plate. She is the widow of Simon Noyes who died c.1689. Simon and was apprenticed to plate worker Henry Noyes from Michaelmas 1652, who was likely his uncle. Simon Noyes bound four apprentices including Moses Greenaway and Thomas Parr, and at the time of death it was the latter and Samuel Watson who were still apprenticed to him. Alice would have taken over the workshop and continued to do so while the two apprentices completed their terms in September 1960 for Watson and in September 1694 for Parr. In 1691 the widow Noyes took her own apprentice; Samuel Judd for seven years. She was assessed as a working goldsmith in the 1691 Poll tax as of St Albans, Wood Street.

The Noyes family: Henry, Simon and Alice are all noted on surviving pieces of holloware, particularly porringers. However, the number of surviving pieces bearing Alice’s mark are much fewer, this may be down to historical confusion between her marks, which are in lozenges, and that of Anthony Nelme. (Mitchell, D., Silversmiths in Elizabethan and Stuart London: their lives and their marks, (2017)., Woodbridge: Boydell Press, p.233). The work of Alice Noyes, who can be counted among the major 17^th century woman silversmiths alongside Dorothy Grant and Jane Rutty, is not represented nor mentioned in the collection of women silversmiths work as published; Glanville, P., and Goldsborough, J. F., Women Silversmith 1685-1845, works from the Collection of The National Museum of Women in the Arts, (1990)., Washington: Thames and Hudson. It is possible that the Noyes business may have been taken over by Thomas Parr as he registered his Britannia standard mark in 1697 in Wood street.

Other silver by Alice Noyes:

A dish of 1691 (Jackson 1921)

A porringer of 1964 (Jackson 1921)