Pair of fruit bowls on stands
Daniel Henry Pontifex (1768-1826)
Date
1796 - 1797
Materials
Silver-gilt
Measurements
11.2 x 22.6 cm; 890 g (weight)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 516461
Summary
A pair of fruit bowls on stands, silver-gilt (sterling), mark of Daniel Pontifex, London, 1796/7. Each circular ogee-shaped bowl and its circular stand are raised and pierced with a border of ovolos encircling quatrefoils between two applied borders of overlapping laurel leaves. Round each bowl’s flat base is a wide embossed border of stiff leaves. The stands have a dished well before rising with embossed fluted sides to a flat platform. Each bowl is engraved on one side with a coat of arms and on the opposite side with a crest. The same armorials are engraved in the centre of each stand. Heraldry: The arms and crest are those of COCKERELL quartering JACKSON, PEPYS, TALBOT and another, for Samuel Pepys Cockerell (1754-1827), with WHETHAM in pretence for his wife Anne, who he married in 1782. Hallmarks: Fully marked on the base of each bowl and stand: ‘DP’ (Daniel Pontifex*), lion passant (sterling), ‘A’ (1796/7), leopard’s head (London), and monarch’s head (duty mark) *Arthur Grimwade: London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, p 46, no 494 Scratch weight: Bowl and stand 1: 28.8 Troy oz Bowl and stand 2: 29:15 Troy oz
Full description
NOTES ON DANIEL PONTIFEX AND THE BOWLS’ DESIGN There are no records of Daniel Pontifex’s apprenticeship nor of the date he received his freedom. He is first documented as a goldsmith when in 1791 he entered his mark as a plateworker in partnership with William Fountain. The partnership was dissolved three years later, after which Pontifex worked on his own. ‘His work, particularly fine silver-gilt dessert dishes and baskets, shows a high standard of execution and delicacy of design’. [1] Lord Fairhaven’s neo-classical bowls on stands are identical to a pair in the Gilbert Collection, even the engraving of the armorials appears to have been undertaken by the same craftsman. A complete service of 1794 in this pattern, comprising twenty-four plates, eight oval dishes, four kidney-shaped dishes, four cushion-shaped dishes and four circular baskets, was formerly in the collection of Earl Fitzwilliam (sold Christie’s 9 June 1948, lots 115-20).’ [2] Scratched on the base of the bowls and stands are ‘Fas S/73/1’ and ‘Fas S/7S/v’. As these marks come immediately after the scratch weights, and are in the same hand, they must be the codes for the cost of the fashioning, as silver was sold by a combination of the object’s weight and the time spent making (fashioning) it. Below the costs of the fashioning, ‘glass v/e’ is scratched. Silver fruit bowls of this design were made to hold an glass liner with a wide flared rim. The original presence of liners is confirmed by this scratched record of the cost of the glass. It’s an unusual proof that the bowls were sold with liners. Unfortunately, Anglesey Abbey’s bowls have lost theirs. [1] Arthur Grimwade: London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, p 629 [2] Timothy Schroder: The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, 1988, pp 321-3 HERALDRY Samuel Pepys Cockerell (1753-1827) was the second son of John Cockerell of Bishop’s Hull, Somerset, and his wife Frances, daughter and heir of John Jackson of Clapham (who was a nephew of the diarist Samuel Pepys and the principal beneficiary of Pepys’s will). Cockerell married Anne Whetham in 1782; they had eleven children. Samuel Pepys Cockerell trained in the office of the architect Sir Robert Taylor and developed an extensive and prosperous practice. In 1774 he became Surveyor of the parish of St. George’s, Hanover Square. The following year he became clerk of works at the Tower of London, and in 1780 acquired the clerkship of Newmarket; despite his reputation for diligence and competence the re-organisation of the Office of Works led to the loss of both these posts. Upon the death of Sir Robert he succeeded him as Surveyor to the Foundling Hospital, and in 1790 presented the board of governors with a project for the development of their estate in Bloomsbury. He worked for the Admiralty, was surveyor of the Victualling Office, and from 1806 surveyor to the East India Company. As surveyor to the Bishop of London he designed much of the Paddington estate (Cockerell lived in Paddington), and he was also surveyor to the See of Canterbury. Amongst his country house commissions was Middleton Hall, Carmarthenshire, now the home of the National Botanic Gardens of Wales, and Daylesford House for Warren Hastings. Sezincote House (for his brother Sir Charles Cockerell 1st Bt., a distinguished civil servant in India), is credited with influencing the design of Brighton Pavilion, after a visit to Sezincote by the Prince Regent in 1807. Jane Ewart, 2025. Heraldry by Gale Glynn.
Provenance
Samuel Pepys CockerellDavid Black, London W1, sold the bowls and stands to Lord Fairhaven on 29 November 1948 for £160, Invoice 1344(Urban) Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966); bequeathed by Lord Fairhaven to the National Trust along with the house and the rest of the contents.National Trust.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, the Fairhaven Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Daniel Henry Pontifex (1768-1826), goldsmith