Skip to main content

Queensland Jewellers - J Hendry Grice, Brisbane

Joseph Hendry Grice, Brisbane 
(working from c.1900 to c.1920)

Joseph Hendry Grice was born in Brisbane in 1877 and opened his own store in Queen Street on Aug 5th 1907. He had previously been in a partnership Swift & Grice and had a store in the Valley (from around 1902). He was active in the Brisbane Municipal Band. He cleared most of his stock in 1917 to move to smaller premises in the basement of the same address. By 1920 the business was still trading under his name in Adelaide Street, but was now owned by Mr Bishop when a large amount of jewellery (1000 pounds worth!) was stolen in a robbery. The name appears to have been changed to the well known Wallace Bishop by 1922. In the 1920s Grice was the mayor of Southport.

Opening advertisement 1907


In both the partnership Swift & Grice and as a sole trader, Grice donated a number of trophies and gold medals for various sporting events including swimming, skating and cricket.

Show below is a gold fob with the only example of his maker's mark we've been able to find. It is stamped '9ct' and 'Grice'. The medal itself was awarded for a cricket season in 1911-12, probably the Harrisville Cricket Association, a small town south-west of Brisbane.





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Women Silversmiths - Dorothy Langlands of Newcastle

Did you know that there have been women silversmiths for hundreds of years?   Women have been noted as silversmiths for hundreds of years.  Widows would often continue on the business of their husbands (often placing their maker's mark in a lozenge) and daughters would enter business partnerships with relatives also in the trade.  Dorothy Langlands was a widow who continued business for 10 years after her husbands death.   For sixty years the Langlands family were the largest manufacturers of silverware in Newcastle, England.   Dorothy Langlands  was the wife of John Langlands II and she took over her husband's business in 1804 when he died. She retired in 1814 and died in 1845.  This means we can date all silver marked with her maker's mark (D.L) to 1804-1814.  This is helpful because a lot of smaller silver items would not have been stamped with the date letter.   Below are two examples of her work.  A nice pair of bright-cu...
Post a Comment
Read more

What's the rarest? Silver from Scottish Provincial towns.

Antique Scottish Provincial silver is one of the most interesting and confusing areas of silver collecting. There were numerous towns that were producing silver in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There were no regulations governing these towns, so each town (or silversmith) came up with their own marks. These were often related to town symbols or coat of arms. It is often the question of rarity that wildly affects the value for these pieces of silver. Below is a table of suggested rarity: Scarce Rare Very Rare Aberdeen Arbroath Cupar Dumfries Ballater Ellon Dundee Banff Fochabers Glasgow (pre-Assay office) Canongate Forres Inverness Elgin Leith Perth Greenock Nairn Iona Peterhead Montrose St. Andrews Paisley Stonehaven Tain Wick This list is published by antiquesilverspoons.co.uk and is based on the research of Richard Turner (who's book, A Directory of Scottish Provincial Silversmiths and Their Ma...
2 comments
Read more