The gilt-bronze rams have been attributed to Matthew Boulton, the one English manufacturer of decorative hardware to escape the anonymity of his colleagues, who lacked guild records to perpetuate their names. Boulton, with his partner John Fothergill, was responsible for an assembly-line production, 1768–1782, covering categories from buttons to vases, on a scale so comprehensive that Josiah Wedgwood deemed him "the most complete manufacturer in England of metal."