Chatelaine
Category
Jewellery
Date
1790 (circa)
Materials
gold
Collection
Calke Abbey, Derbyshire
NT 288833
Summary
A gold and enamel dress fob dating from around 1790. It is designed as two-row and three-row tiers of gold openwork links alternating with oblong plaques translucent royal blue and white line enamelled, divided by a cushion-shaped enamelled gold plaque mounted with half pearl-set hair locket centre under a glazed cover, the fob terminating in a rotating three-sided gold and hard stone intaglio miniature fob seal, a lady’s gold cannetille work miniature fob seal with orange agate base stamped ‘Verite’ and a gold watch key. Suspending below a gold watch from the same set (NT 288768).
Full description
This is probably the dress fob given to Nanny Hawkins, Lady Crewe (1765/6-1827) along with a watch (NT 288768) by Sir Henry Harpur, 7th Baronet (1763-1819) in 1792; bequeathed by Lady Crewe as ‘the Gold enamelled watch presented to me by my beloved Sir Henry on our marriage and also the Gold enamelled watch chain one of the first presents I ever received from him’ to pass to her unmarried daughters and thence to the owner of Calke where ‘these said articles should be considered as an heir loom apportioned to the ffamily Mansion of Calke Abbey’ (NA PROB/11/1699/16). These items were recorded in the 1886 inventory of the family jewel case as ‘Enamel’d watch, chain & seals, left by Nanete, Lady Crewe to the owner of Calke’ (D2375/H/F/2/27).
Provenance
This is probably the dress fob given to Nanny Hawkins, Lady Crewe (1765/6-1827) along with a watch (NT 288768) by Sir Henry Harpur, 7th Baronet (1763-1819) in 1792; bequeathed by Lady Crewe as ‘the Gold enamelled watch presented to me by my beloved Sir Henry on our marriage and also the Gold enamelled watch chain one of the first presents I ever received from him’ to pass to her unmarried daughters and thence to the owner of Calke where ‘these said articles should be considered as an heir loom apportioned to the ffamily Mansion of Calke Abbey’. These items were recorded in the 1886 inventory of the family jewel case as ‘Enamel’d watch, chain & seals, left by Nanete, Lady Crewe to the owner of Calke’. Thence by descent to Henry Harpur-Crewe (1921-91) and transferred with Calke Abbey and its contents to the National Trust by the Treasury in lieu of Capital Transfer Tax in 1985 with an endowment provided by the National Heritage Memorial Fund.