AN EDWARD VII SILVER-MOUNTED GLASS CLARET-JUG

Omar Ramsden (1873-1939) was born and trained in Sheffield, heart of the silver and cutlery trade for the north of England. He was born into a family with ties to the silver trade and, as early as 1887, was working as an apprentice to a firm of silversmiths there. While the training that he received during that apprenticeship no doubt helped him to be a successful businessman, and would later help him manage a workshop, it was his time doing evening classes at the Sheffield School of Art which first gave him the taste for design. It was also there that he met Alywn Carr (1872-1940) who would become a friend and partner from 1898-1919.

The combination of his knowledge of manufacturing techniques with his, and at the beginning Carr's, designs, which while sometimes copying and often inspired by earlier examples, were always innovative and timeless, allowed him to turn his workshop St. Dunstan's in Fulham, West London, into a very successful business.