Trademarks from Gales & Martin's 1787 Directory
Robert Tricket was a silver plate worker, who registered a silver mark from Far Field (Hillfoot) in 1773. Tricket was descended from a family in Stannington. In the directory in the following year, Madin & Tricket was listed at the same address as a cutler and plater. The partner was Philip Madin. They used the marks ‘MADIN’ (granted in 1754) and ‘OPUS’, besides registering silver marks in 1778 and 1781. The speciality was silver plated table cutlery. Sheffield Galleries & Museums Trust has an example of Madin & Tricket’s work – a scimitar-style knife and fork set, which has handles made from two thin, stamped sections of silver, which were soldered together and filled with resin. Other examples of their work can be seen in an exhibition catalogue of the Goldsmiths’ Company in London (1999).
In the early 1780s, Madin & Tricket was dissolved. In 1786, Robert Tricket & Co in Hill Foot registered a silver mark. In the Sheffield directory (1787), a new partnership appeared – Tricket, Haslehurst, Whiteley, & Pryor – which was based in Hillfoot and made silver-plated table knives. The trade marks were ‘OVA’ and ‘OPUS’. This enterprise had been dissolved by 1797, when Robert Tricket & Co was again listed, using the trade mark letters ‘EDG’. Tricket evidently prospered. He married twice: first to Mary, the daughter of William Fairbank, the surveyor; and second to Catherine Dent, who belonged to the wealthy Dent family of Lincoln and York. Catherine Tricket died in 1814; Robert Tricket in the following year. He had families by both wives and the eldest surviving son by his second marriage, Joseph (b. 1791), later took the name Dent as his surname after he inherited his uncle’s fortune. Robert’s other children married into Sheffield families. Mary married William Hargreaves (of Colley & Hargreaves); Ann married John Scantlebury; and Isabella married William Hoyland (Sheffield Independent, 5 August 1893). This was a Quaker network. Tricket built Longshaw Lodge, near Hathersage, which was later owned by the Dukes of Rutland and used as a grand shooting lodge.