Alexander James Strachan, one of the finest early nineteenth-century London gold and silver box makers and a chief supplier of the same to the royal goldsmiths, Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, was baptised at St Paul, Covent Garden, London, on 6 March 1774. His parents were John Strachan and his wife, Elizabeth (née Bacon, 1749–1811), who were married at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 29 September 1771. Nothing is known of his early life and training although it seems likely that he was acquainted with a number of contemporaneous goldsmiths specialising in gold boxes, engineturning and enamelling, particularly James Morisset (1738–1815) and Giles Loyer (1760– 1822), both of whom at the end of the eighteenth century were located in Denmark Street, Soho. At the age of twenty-five, Strachan entered his first mark on 21 September 1799, giving his address as 30 Long Acre, the premises of John Strachan and Edward Wood, trading as Strachan & Wood, varnish makers and colourmen. By 18 July 1803 Strachan had moved to 7 Mercer Street, Long Acre, where he remained until notifying the Assay Office at Goldsmiths’ Hall on 6 November 1828 that he had relocated to 125 Long Acre. Meanwhile, in 1817, Strachan became a freeman by redemption of the Goldsmiths’ Company, probably for the benefit of his three eldest sons, John (1802–1880), Alexander James junior (1804–1853) and Edward (1809–1844), who became his apprentices between 1817 and 1823. In the mid- to late 1820s the father and two of his sons (John and Alexander James junior) traded together under the style of A. J. Strachan & Sons, until their partnership was dissolved as regards John on 1 September 1834. A subsequent dissolution of partnership shows that the business continued at 125 Long Acre as Strachan & Son, goldsmiths and jewellers, until Alexander James Strachan senior retired in May 1838. Thereafter, Alexander James Strachan senior and his second wife, Alice (née Chambers, ?1791– 1861), left London, where latterly they had been residing in Brompton, to live at 14 Hampton Place, Brighton. In 1848 Strachan applied to the Goldsmiths’ Company for financial assistance, ‘stating that from the falling away of business he was obliged to retire with a very little property and having still a portion of his family dependant upon him’, and was granted £40. He died in Brighton on 21 February 1850, after which his widow remained at their house in Brighton as a lodging housekeeper. From 1838, Strachan’s business was continued at 125 Long Acre by Alexander James Strachan junior until on 8 March 1844 the latter came to an arrangement with his creditors whereby he transferred his estate and effects for the benefit of those creditors to John Williams of Frith Street, Soho, goldsmith and jeweller, and Benjamin Stephens of Searle’s Place, Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, goldsmith and jeweller. The end of Strachan’s business was followed on 17 April 1844 by the auction sale of the remaining lease of 125 Long Acre, the domestic furniture, china, books, etc. and the ‘FIXTURES, STOCK, and UTENSILS of a WORKING JEWELLER’, comprising a ‘rose hand engine, by Fieldhouse; turning lathe, draw bench, flatting and brushing machines, erection of furnace, forge bellows, about 220 steel sunk dies, various tools, patterns, and casts, fittings of gas, countinghouse desks, two iron safes, and a quantity of unmanufactured stock’. This type of flower-scattered openwork on which polychrome-enamelled exotic birds, squirrels and butterflies perch was a speciality of Strachan, his personal interpretation of the rococo revival of the period. On occasion he used it as an overlay on different materials such as motherof- pearl and glass.

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