George Ashmead
Ashmead Argent & Co
Part 2
Period 1865-1879
Ashmead Argent & Co.
In Part 1 of this story we saw that the business of Ashmead & Co started at 10 Duke Street in 1830, then moved to Bishopsgate from around 1862.
From about 1865 the firm is known as Ashmead, Argent & Co. Later the firm would move to to Moorgate from 1879 when it returned to its original name of Ashmead & Co, and finally moved back to 180 Bishopsgate, at least from 1914 closing around the 1920’s.
From Duke Street to Bishopsgate
Not long after George Ashmead Senior died in 1858, the family gave up the Duke Street shop, and by the early 1860s the family’s business, now led by George Ashmead Junior, was at 35 Bishopsgate in the City of London.
Ashmead Junior also won a medal at the 1862 London International Exhibition in Kensington.
In 1862, Ashmead Junior’s case labels read “Ashmead & Co, Naturalists, 35, Bishopsgate Without,”. Soon afterwards, in the same year, we see a new label emerging reading Ashmead, Argent & Co at 180 Bishopsgate.
Ashmead Argent & Co: Who was James Argent?
In the text of “The History of the Collections of Birds in the British Museum 1906, by Richard Bowdler Sharpe, Argent is mentioned as a dealer and collector of tortoises and reptiles, and who supplied about 500 birds to the British Museum between 1843-1854. He was known to the author, Sharpe, only through the recollection of Edward Gerrard Senior.
It is out there in the ether on the internet that Argent was the “grandson” of George B. Ashmead Senior. I find no evidence for this, and Argent’s date of birth (1798) excludes this completely.
The naturalist James Argent (b. Roydon, Essex 1798), was the same age as Ashmead Senior, and had already been trading in Bishopsgate for twenty years before joining with Ashmead. He first appears in print in the Post Office Directory of 1841, as a naturalist at 32 Bishopsgate Without. He appears again in 1843, when he is also named a referee for the Beresford House Academy, suggesting that a naturalist in the city was a respectable man whose word a school could cite. He is there in print again in 1852.
That is nearly everything I found on him; I found no marriage, kinship, or biological or in-law marriage connection to the Ashmead family. The most likely explanation is that two tradesmen of the same age and trade, one in Mayfair and one in the City, had known each other for years through the natural history dealer network before they made the formal association between the two firms – that is, between George Ashmead Junior and James Argent.
Ashmead’s medal of 1862
The International Exhibition of 1862 opened at South Kensington on 1 May, in a vast brick-and-iron building whose two great domes the souvenir albums of the period liked to illustrate.
The alphabetical list of awards (p. 375 of the official record of medals) enters “Ashmead, G. B.” under catalogue number 5588, Class 29, with the award letter M., for Medal, rather than the H.M. of the honourable mentions that surround it. On page 312 of the same catalogue, a citation for Ashmead reads: “For the merit of his collection of eggs and stuffed birds.”
Three things now follow:
The award was a medal, not a mention. It was made to George Benjamin Ashmead personally in 1862 and not to a firm, and since the elder Ashmead had died in 1858, the exhibitor was the son.
Argent’s name appears nowhere in the entry, so the partnership name that later came to dominate the labels up to 1879 was not of the same style as Ashmead’s in 1862.
The citation also says nothing of a dome or of a “Tree of Birds,” which has been claimed elsewhere on the internet as being a provable record and surviving from Ashmead’s exhibit of this exhibition of 1862.
If this display was shown, the evidence for it is not immediate – and could be found in the range of other catalogues that exist, or in the surviving case itself – and I have not seen either.
One celebrated surviving Ashmead dome shows the typical splendour of the Ashmead style Photo: Shapiro Auctions Australia
Ashmead’s Dating and labels
The medal of 1862 became the firm’s trademark. Cases carrying the legend “Prize Medal 1862” need to be read with care, because these labels were printed after the winning of the medal in 1862 and could have been in use for the next twenty years.
The medal reference therefore dates the earliest possible year for a case, not the actual year of the case.
The 35 Bishopsgate address on at least one surviving label, together with published records placing the firm of Ashmead, Argent & Co there in Bishopsgate between 1865 and 1879, suggests that cased birds carrying this label were made between 1862 (the time of the Kensington Exhibition) and 1865 (the start of the Ashmead/Argent partnership). That is my personal statement for collectors’ interest.
I cannot find a verifiable recorded death event for James Argent but by the date of 1879 he would have been an old man of age at least 90, so I believe the partnership of Ashmead/Argent ended around 1879 although the Post Office Trade Directory of 1882 still shows Ashmead, Argent & Co at 35 Bishopsgate Without, and at 51 Finsbury Pavement.
By the time of 1881 it is recorded that Ashmead Junior employed five men at the premises at 35 Bishopsgate Without.
By 1891 his specific trade description is “Bird Naturalist”
The Fisheries Exhibition, 1883
In 1883 four years after the partnership ended, the firm is recorded as being as exhibitor at The Fisheries Exhibition at South Kensington, appearing in print as Ashmead G.B. & Co, 35 Bishopsgate Street.
Ashmead Junior exhibited in two categories, first in “fish” and second in “mammals birds and reptiles”. He won a Bronze medal for the marine fish and feeding birds display, but was beaten to the Gold medal in that category by the Bombay Museum for their cases of fish-eating birds, while provincial taxidermist, T.E. Gunn took the Silver medal for his collection of stuffed birds, and a Bronze medal for his otter.
The Gold medal in the section of fishing instruments went to Ashmead.
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News of 30 June 1883 reviewed the display of fish-eating birds, and its verdict on the London houses was not an unqualified compliment:
The reviewer is damning and flattering in the same breath. The London houses’ birds are criticised for having poor balance and the physical plausibility of how a bird stands on its legs, while their exhibits are declared worth studying, and the merit goes to a provincial man, T.E. Gunn.
The same notice puts Ashmead alongside Walter Burton and Rowland Ward, a roll call of the trade that readers of this site will recognise.
Next: Part 3: Arsenic Feathers and Ledgers
My Sources for this article:
Post Office Directories 1841, 1843, 1852, 1875, 1881 and 1882.
Newspaper clipping of 1843 (Beresford House Academy).
Newspaper clipping of c.1878 (answers to correspondents).
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 30 June 1883, p. 414.
International Exhibition 1862, list of medals and honourable mentions (Class 29, no. 5588), p. 312, with the alphabetical index of awards, p. 375.
Remembrances of the Great International Exhibition, 1862 (Read & Co., London), for the building.
Historical Rare Birds, “Taxidermists” and “Biographies: A” (historicalrarebirds.info).
Tennants Auctioneers, report of the Natural History and Taxidermy Sale, July 2018 (tennants.co.uk).
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