Summary

A two-handled cup and cover, silver-gilt (sterling), mark of John Payne, London, 1756/7. The body of the baluster-shaped cup, its stem, foot, and domed cover are raised; the handles, finial and gadroon border are cast. At the base a low circular foot ring supports the slightly domed foot which is embossed and chased with fruit and flowers. The short spool-shaped stem is undecorated except for a narrow, applied band of gadroons at its waist. Each side of the body is highly embossed and chased with festoons of foliage, fruit (including pomegranates, apples and grapes) and scrolls round a rococo cartouche containing a later engraved coat of arms. Framing the cartouches are embossed and engraved vignettes; one side depicting a lion and an eagle; the other depicting an angler and fox. The double scroll handles have thumbpieces formed as busts of satyrs, with their fur, front legs, pan pipes and a wine flask decorating the handles. The rim of the cover is applied with a gadrooned border; soldered underneath is a deep flange. An embossed and chased border of fruit and scrolls encircles the steeply rising, similarly decorated, dome. The finial sits on a base of vine leaves and grapes, and is formed as a spiral of scrolls, grapes and leaves. Heraldry: Arms, supporters and motto beneath a viscount’s coronet: LOWTHER for William Lowther, Viscount and Baron Lowther of Whitehaven (1757-1844), subsequently Earl of Lonsdale, impaling FANE for Augusta eldest daughter of John Fane, 9th Earl of Westmorland (1761-1838). Hallmarks:  Fully marked on the base of the cup within the foot ring and on the flange of the cover: ‘JP’ (John Payne*), lion passant (sterling), ‘A’ (1756/7), and leopard’s head (London) *Arthur Grimwade: London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, London, 1990, p 120, no 1597 Scratch weight: None

Full description

NOTE ON JOHN PAYNE 1751 was a momentous year for John Payne. In February he married the only daughter of Mr Banks (the Clerk to the Goldsmiths’ Company); in April he registered his first mark and took over his father's business at the Hen and Chickens in Cheapside; and in August his father, Humphrey Payne died. [1+2] The latter’s obituary describes him as ‘formerly an eminent goldsmith’ who ‘having acquired a handsome fortune, he quitted trade to his Son a few Months ago, to whom he left the Bulk of his Estate.’ Arthur Grimwade writes that Humphrey Payne’s ‘work, never in any way ambitious, appears to have been limited to plain domestic pieces in the hollow-ware category, covered cups, tankards, mugs, tea and coffee pieces. It is doubtful whether he produced candlesticks or other castings. While thoroughly competent, his work never shows any individuality of design.’ [3] John was apprenticed to his father in 1733. Like his father, most of his wares were plain and unpretentious, but he did produce some two-handled cups and coffee pots with embossed rococo decoration, including a cup with the same cast handles and finial as Anglesey Abbey’s cup, but of a baluster form and with an unusually long stem. [4] The embossed and chased work on the Abbey’s cup is particularly fine, especially the vignettes, suggesting that John Payne may have employed an outworker to decorate the cup, and commissioned a specialist in casting to make the handles and finial, or maybe he bought a completed cup from another goldsmiths, which he marked with his punch. Almost fifty years after the cup’s creation it was engraved with the arms of Viscount Lowther (see below). In 1947, when Christie’s conducted a two-day sale, the catalogue’s foreword announced that ‘the greater part of the plate now offered … bears the arms of … Viscount Lowther … a munificent patron of the arts.’ His passion for silver included the purchase of one of the five great Shields of Achilles designed by John Flaxman (1755–1826) for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell; the others were bought by George IV (for display at his coronation banquet), the royal Dukes of York and Cumberland, and the 3rd Duke of Northumberland. Lord Fairhaven commissioned the dealer, David Black, to bid on his behalf at the 1947 Lowther sale, buying for Anglesey Abbey the Shield of Achilles (see 516395), four wine coolers (see 516495), and this cup, which cost £72 plus Black’s 5% commission. [1] The Gentleman’s Magazine, volume 21, February 1751, p 91 [2] The London Evening Post, Saturday 3 August 1751 [3] Arthur Grimwade: London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, London, 1976, p 616 [4] Sotheby’s New York, Important European Furniture, 23 May 2012, lot 171 [5] Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd: Fine Old English Silver sold by order of the Right Hon. The Earl of Lonsdale, OBE, 19 and 20 February 1947, lot 125 HERALDRY The arms are for Sir William Lowther Bt. (1757-1844) as Viscount Lowther of Whitehaven, impaling those of his wife Lady Augusta Fane, eldest daughter of John, 9th Earl of Westmorland. He inherited the viscountcy from Sir James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale (1736-1802). The Lonsdale earldom was re-created for William Lowther in 1807, when he was also made a Knight of the Garter. The arms therefore relate to the period 1802-07. [6]S ir James Lowther (Earl James) was granted a barony, viscountcy and earldom in 1784, titles which expired on his death. In 1797 he was granted a second viscountcy (Lowther of Whitehaven) with special remainder to the heirs of his cousin, the Revd. Sir William Lowther 1st Bt. (there were many baronetcies, within different branches of the Lowther family). The special remainder allowed the continued ennoblement of the family, and the baronet’s son William Lowther, who was Earl James’s third cousin twice removed, thus became 2nd Viscount in 1802. Five years later, in 1807, he became 1st Earl of Lonsdale of the second creation (Earl William). Earl James, known as ‘wicked Jimmy’, was thought to have been the richest commoner in England before he came of age. The Lonsdale estates and wealth were extensive, and a related Lonsdale baronet, Sir James (1673-1755), was reputed to have left property worth £2,000,000 at his death, initially derived from the development of Whitehaven as a coal port in the seventeenth century. The political activity of the Lowthers was initiated by Earl James, who ruthlessly controlled a cohort of up to nine Members of Parliament who, as ‘his’ members, were expected to put his interests above everything else. On 26 January 1782 he wrote: ‘I would have you to know that the gentlemen who are brought into Parliament by me are not accountable to any person but myself for their conduct (when their constituents do not interfere)’. ‘Wicked Jimmy’ was a disreputable man whose behaviour ‘rose almost to the point of madness’. William Lowther (Earl William) was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1780 he successively represented Appleby (briefly before William Pitt the Younger stood for the seat (q.v. 516470)), then Carlisle, Cumberland, and Rutland. When newly married William Lowther wrote in a letter to his father in early 1782: ‘The duty I owe my country when she requires it, is first due to her - but Sir James [as he was before he was ennobled in 1784] forgets that I have now concerns of my own, and in my sphere of life, inattention to my wife, my family, and my own affairs, would be injury and injustice to myself and though I might not contribute to promote the public good yet I should be a very bad member of the community without it’. The future Earl William was described by Wraxall as ‘a man of very moderate parts’. A Tory in politics, he appears to have been a somewhat reluctant Member of Parliament, but to have been tolerant and well-liked, disdaining Sabbatarianism. After inheriting the viscountcy Earl William was Lord Lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland until his death in 1844. As a coal magnate he spent £200,000 on the Lowther estate and built a new Lowther Castle, commissioning Robert Smirke to build the castellated mansion, between 1806 and 1814, on the site of the late seventeenth-century Lowther Hall. Smirke found him ‘ingenious, modest and gentlemanly in his manners’. Amongst Earl James’s debtors when he died was the father of the poet William Wordsworth; his successor immediately refunded the money to the Wordsworth family with interest and befriended the poet, assisting him financially. Both Earl William and his countess were patrons of the arts: visitors to the Castle included the poet Robert Southey and the artist JMW Turner, amongst others. Earl William had six children by his wife Lady Augusta Fane, the eldest of whom, Henry 2nd Earl (1787-1872) died unmarried, having had an active political career and three illegitimate children by three opera singers. The 2nd Earl provided two surviving children with £125,00 each but the main beneficiary of his estate was his nephew and heir to the earldom, Sir Henry Lowther, 3rd Earl of Lowther (1818-76). [6] Cumbria Archive Centre Carlisle holds correspondence and papers 1761-1844, ref: DLONS Jane Ewart, 2025 Heraldry by Gale Glynn