William Cripps

(1715 - 1766)
 

William Cripps was a prominent and prolific manufacturing and retail silversmith based in London.

After being apprenticed to the popular goldsmith and banker William Daume, he was set free in 1738 and five years later he submitted his first mark as a largeworker in Compton Street, Soho. In 1746 he moved his premises to St. James’s Street, where he remained until his death.

Cripps specialised in fine tableware pieces and became a ‘versatile exponent of the rococo style’ (Arthur G. Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990). Nowadays his sets of dishes, candlesticks and drinking vessels in the Rococo style are sought after in auction by collectors and some of his pieces can be seen at the Victoria and Albert museum in London.

Cripps died in 1766 and, as it appears from his will, he did not have neither wife nor children: his business was continued first by George Coyte and later by Mark Cripps, possibly William’s cousin.