Pair Edwardian Satirical Silver Peppers / Menu Holders Joseph Chamberlain Two Loaves

A rare and unusual pair of Edwardian satirical novelty silver combined Peppers and Menu Holders, made in the form of two pierced and compressed cottage loaves with pull-off lids forming the pepper pots, surmounted by busts of Joseph Chamberlain wearing his trademark morning dress with orchid buttonhole and monocle, upright clips behind to hold menu cards. Lead weighted bases.

By Saunders & Shepherd, Chester, 1903. Also stamped with registered design numbers: 421313

Made to celebrate a speech made by Joseph Chamberlain at a 1903 political meeting at Bingley Hall, Birmingham - in response to an article in the pro-Liberal 'Daily News' which had stated that a 'tariff reform' loaf would be smaller due to increased costs of protectionism, Chamberlain displayed a 'tariff reform' & 'free trade' loaf & asked the audience if they could tell which was the smaller. Chamberlain & the loaves became part of the iconography of the tariff reform campaign & addressed concern over food prices & cost of living.

Joseph Chamberlain (8 July 1836 – 2 July 1914) was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually was a leading imperialist in coalition with the Conservatives. He split both major British parties in the course of his career. He was the father, by different marriages, of Nobel Peace Prize winner Austen Chamberlain and of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Chamberlain made his career in Birmingham, first as a manufacturer of screws and then as a notable mayor of the city. He was a radical Liberal Party member and an opponent of the Elementary Education Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 75) on the basis that it could result in subsidising Church of England schools with local ratepayers' money. As a self-made businessman, he had never attended university and had contempt for the aristocracy. He entered the House of Commons at 39 years of age, relatively late in life compared to politicians from more privileged backgrounds. Rising to power through his influence with the Liberal grassroots organisation, he served as President of the Board of Trade in the Second Gladstone ministry (1880–85). At the time, Chamberlain was notable for his attacks on the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury, and in the 1885 general election he proposed the "Unauthorised Programme", which was not enacted, of benefits for newly enfranchised agricultural labourers, including the slogan promising "three acres and a cow". Chamberlain resigned from the Third Gladstone ministry in 1886 in opposition to Irish Home Rule. He helped to engineer a Liberal Party split and became a Liberal Unionist, a party which included a bloc of MPs based in and around Birmingham.

Reserved - £500.00