Tea caddy
Daniel Smith and Robert Sharp
Category
Silver
Date
1766 - 1768
Materials
Silver-gilt, sterling
Measurements
13.5 x 9.7 x 9.7 cm; 360 g (Weight); 10.8 cm (Height); 9.7 cm (Width); 9.7 cm (Depth); 3.6 cm (Height); 7.2 cm (Width); 7.2 cm (Depth); 282 g (Weight); 78 g (Weight); 13.5 cm (Height); 9.8 cm (Width); 9.9 cm (Depth); 10.8 cm (Height); 9.8 cm (Width); 9.9 cm (Depth); 3.8 cm (Height); 7.5 cm (Width); 7.5 cm (Depth); 342 g (Weight); 255 g (Weight); 87 g (Weight)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 516462
Summary
A pair of matched tea caddies, silver-gilt (sterling), mark of Daniel Smith & Robert Sharp, London, 1766/7 and 1767/8. Each bombé-shaped caddy is square in cross section; its four side panels and flat base are seamed along the edges. The rim of the base is applied with a border of cast ovolos over an openwork border of chased scrolling foliage with an everted scroll foot at each corner. The lower sides of the caddy are embossed and chased with scrolls and stylised foliage, which extend up the ribbed sides to join the festoons of embossed and chased flowers and foliage round the shoulders. The caddy’s square rim is applied with a vertical moulded border. The pull-off cover is raised, stepped, slightly domed and chased to form four triangles. Each triangle is embossed and chased with borders and sprays of flowers and foliage. Applied to the rim is a narrow, undecorated border with incurved corners. A deep flange is applied beneath the cover. The finial of a cast pineapple or pinecone on a bed of leaves is attached with a nut. Either one or two locating notches are cut in the rim of each caddy and its cover. Heraldry: None Hallmarks: Fully marked on the base of each caddy: leopard’s head (London), lion passant (sterling), ‘L’ or ‘M’ (1766/7 or 1667/8), and ‘DS’ over ‘RS’ (Daniel Smith & Robert Sharp*); and part marked on the flange of each cover: ‘DS’ over ‘RS’, and lion passant *Arthur Grimwade: London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, London, 1990, p 250, no 3523 Scratch weight: None
Full description
Few had tasted tea in Britain before the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The popularisation of the drink has been credited to the Infanta of Portugal, Catherine Duchess of Braganza. Setting foot on British soil for the first time a week before her marriage to Charles II, she asked for a cup of tea; a drink already popular with the Portuguese aristocracy. None was available, so she was given ale. Fortunately, on the day of her wedding – 21 May 1662 – one of the many luxury items supplied by the Portuguese court was a chest of tea. Within a few years the East India Company was importing tea and the British obsession with tea was born. Initially its price was exorbitant – as much as 60 shillings per pound in the early 18th century – so tea could only be drunk by the wealthy. This fashionable drink was enjoyed at home. (Unlike coffee which was primarily drunk in public coffee houses.) Silverware was commissioned to serve the new drink, and guests were invited to take tea, bearing witness to the refinement of their hosts. Such was the acclaim of tea drinking that the rich even chose to have their portraits painted round a table filled with the latest tea equipment – porcelain cups from China, English silver teapots, kettles, spoon trays, slop bowls, caddies and teaspoons. The earliest English tea caddies date from round 1700. They were small, but as the price of tea went down, making it more affordable, the size of the caddies increased. One hundred years after its arrival in England, tea was still sufficiently valuable for caddies to be supplied in lockable wood boxes. It is possible a box (now lost) would have made to house Anglesey Abbey’s two caddies. One caddy would have held green tea, the other black tea; with pairs of caddies sometimes accompanied by a matching silver box for sugar or a bowl for mixing the two teas. Daniel Smith & Robert Sharp ran a large workshop in the mid to late 18th century. They produced silver as varied as magnificent race cups (the most famous example, designed by Robert Adam, was for the horse race run on the Dundas family’s course at Aske Hall in Yorkshire - see 516448) to items of well-made domestic plate such as coffee pots, sauce boats and tea caddies. Bombé shaped tea caddies were popular for about thirty years between 1740 and 1770. Smith & Sharp produced several versions, often with embossed and chased decoration. As fashion progressed and the size of the caddies increased the designs changed, so that by the mid-1770’s the firm was making large handsome circular or oval tea caddies with straight sides, flat covers and finely engraved bright-cut decoration. These were set with a lock (wood boxes no longer being deemed necessary), as tea was still too valuable to allow the servants to steal it. There are references to the market in second and third-hand tea leaves, or of households permitting their servants to re-use the old tea leaves. Jane Ewart, 2025
Provenance
David Black of 1 Burlington Gardens, London W1, sold the caddies to Lord Fairhaven on 21 December 1935(?) for £30, Invoice 255 (Urban) Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Baron 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 Smith and Robert Sharp, goldsmith
References
Schroder 2009: Timothy Schroder, British and Continental Gold and Silver in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2009, pp 701-5 Ellis, 1999: Myrtle Ellis. 'Huttleston Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) as a collector of English silver.' Apollo, 1999, p 39