The accounts of collegiate and monastic institutions give abundant entries of the price of pewter vessels, called also garnish.

1718, Matthew Prior, Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind, Canto 1, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 333,
First Poets, all the World agrees,
Write half to profit, half to please
Matter and figure They produce;
For Garnish This, and That for Use;

This hard-headed old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing for a song.

There had been a semblance of chivalry in the attitude from which, at the beginning of their marriage, he had briefly regarded her; but forty-seven years had efficiently disposed of that garnish of politeness.

1699, B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, London: W. Hawes et al.,
Garnish money, what is customarily spent among the Prisoners at first coming in.

1710, Joseph Addison, The Tatler, No. 163, 25 April, 1710, Glasgow: Robert Urie, 1754, p. 165,
[…] as that admirable writer has the best and worst verses of any among our English poets, Ned Softly has got all the bad ones without book, which he repeats upon occasion, to shew his reading, and garnish his conversation.

[…] the whip […] was garnished with a massive horse’s head of plated metal.

[…] the good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass was fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished home.

When the editorial board of Fire met again, we did not plan a new issue, but emptied our pockets to help poor Thurman whose wages were being garnished weekly because he had signed for the printer’s bills.

Garnish

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