Gilding pot and battery

This gilding pot and ‘Eveready’ battery were formerly owned by George Denton who was a watchmaker, jeweller, and ironmonger, in Wellington in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The circular pot is made of white enamel, with a thick wire handle secured into two loops opposite each other on the outside of the pot. The pot has a white domed enamel lid, and there is a small handle with a stripe of blue enamel in the centre of the lid. There is a paper label on the outside of the pot with ‘Gold Plating’ written on it.

The 1.5-volt Eveready battery has two terminals on the top, with a length of wire attached to the (+) terminal. Another piece of wire is twisted around the first.

These tools would have been used to plate metal in gold via the electroplating technique. This technique uses an electric current to coat a surface with metal.