Summary

Tea kettle and lamp, sterling silver, Pierre Le Cheaube, London, 1726-7. Kettle waiter, sterling silver, Frederick Kandler, London, 1745/6. The plain kettle, which is raised, is of compressed spherical form with an applied, seamed foot ring. The flush circular lid, with a crudely pierced later steam hole and a cast baluster finial with ivory knop, has a flush-five-part pin hinge. The S-shaped spout is cast in two pieces and has a C-Scroll moulding at the lip. The bases top the button hinges of the plain bail handle are cast and soldered to the body of the kettle. The wickering of the upper part of the handle may be original. The frame on which the kettle sits has three cast cabriole legs terminating in claw-and-ball feet and rising to a flaring cast and pierced ring, conforming to the base of the kettle. Three flattened and curved wire brackets connect the legs to a moulded and seamed ring which holds the raised semi-spherical lamp. The lamp has a flattened base, an applied moulded wire which supports it in the ring and a cast dished cover, the wick fitting of which is absent. The shaped triangular waiter with incurved corners is raised with a cast gadroon border enriched by leaves at the terminal points of the triangle. It has three cast hoof feet. Marks: Kettle and lamp fully marked on underside with maker’s mark ‘PC’ between club and five-pointed star in extended octagon (Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, no. 2145), sterling lion, leopard’s head, date letter ‘L’. Lamp frame not marked. Kettle waiter fully marked on the underside with maker’s mark ‘FK’ in italics beneath a fleur-de-lis (Grimwade 1990, no. 691), lion passant and date letter ‘k’. Scratchweight: On underside of kettle ‘52=6’; underside of waiter ‘13=18’. Heraldry: On the side of the kettle, with the spout to the left, have been re-engraved c.1751 the quartered shield, supporters and motto of the 2nd Earl of Bristol in an ermine mantling and beneath an earl’s coronet. The side of the lamp is engraved with the Hervey crest beneath an earl’s coronet. The waiter is engraved as the kettle.

Full description

TEA KETTLE & LAMP The 1st Earl of Bristol became convinced that excessive tea drinking was bad for the health of his sons, even potentially fatal, and a number of rants against it are included in his later letters. On 27 December 1735, for instance, he wrote to John, Lord Hervey : Your constitution would never have deserved half the hard words you have given it, had not you ruind it by forceing on it so many tuns of that detestable infusion of tea, by the constant use wherof, tho’ not for near so long a time nor to so strong a degree as you have done, your brother Felton hath already destroyd the strongest stamina that ever any man was blessd …[1] In spite of such vociferous outbursts, and a personal preference for chocolate (NT 852070), Lord Bristol does not seem to have banned ‘that poysonous plant tea’[2] from his house. To do so would, anyway, have been socially unacceptable, so intertwined was it with the rituals of aristocratic life, and there are numerous references to items associated with the service of tea in the Earl’s accounts. In 1689 he bought ‘a white Tea-pot & bason’ for his first wife, adding ‘a Tea=Table & 2 pair of China Cupps’ the following year. The tea pot is likely to have been Chinese porcelain, perhaps with silver or silver-gilt mounts, and the table to have been carved and gilt and one of the large number imported from China and Japan at the end of the seventeenth century. Good examples survive of both at Ham House in Surrey where they would have been used in the Duchess’s private closet.[3] On 7 December 1698 the future 1st Earl paid his goldsmith-banker, James Chambers, ‘for a Tea-Kettle & Lampe wt. 90 ou, 11 dwtt at 6s. 2d.’ Kettles were then something of a novelty and this one, which was of a prodigious weight, is likely to have been of the flattened pear or loaf form as is the earliest surviving English example, that of 1694 in the Norwich Castle Museum. The shape persisted for the first two decades of the eighteenth century. There is no mention of the 1698 kettle being turned in subsequently and it may well have been relegated to Suffolk when in 1726 Lord Bristol acquired a new kettle, not long before Lord Hervey suffered the severe bout of fever that may have sparked his father’s fear of the effects of tea.[4] The entry in the Earl’s accounts is dated 6 April 1726 which is too early for the commencement of the 1726/7 date letter and as no weight is given it is impossible to be certain that it relates to the surviving kettle. The probability is, however, that it does and that Lord Bristol either paid in advance (which seems unlikely) or that he got the date wrong when he transferred his individual notes of payments into the account book. The simple, restrained form of the kettle is common for the period and likely to have been the preference of the Earl, particularly given his antipathy to the associated drink. Had it been the acquisition of his son and daughter-in-law it would most probably have had some at least of the Régence embellishment seen on their ice pails and bread basket (NT 852069 & 852063.1). An example of 1726 by de Lamerie with such decoration around the lid is in the Clarke Art Institute at Williamstown, Massachusetts.[5] Further corroboration is given to the 1st Earl having been the purchaser by the maker being Pierre Le Cheaube (anglicised to Peter Le Chouabe in the register entry for 1726), not Paul Crespin as previously attributed. Crespin was patronised by Lord Hervey (see NT 852069) whereas Lord Bristol by this time was acquiring all his new silver through David Willaume I. Le Cheaube was from Metz, as was Willaume, and was apprenticed to him in 1700. When he entered his first mark in 1707 he gave his address as Pall Mall and was probably thus still employed by Willaume, who was at that point based there. Arthur Grimwade has suggested that the rarity of his mark is likely to be the result of his continuing to be employed by Willaume for much of his career, and his late adoption of a sterling mark supports that. Of those few pieces by him that are known, a covered tankard also bears the date letter for 1726 while an orange strainer possibly by him is marked for 1735.[6] As he entered his second, sterling mark on 27 June 1726, giving as his address Glasshouse Street in Soho, he may have left Willaume’s workshop that year and thereafter practised independently.[7] KETTLE WAITER This waiter, which is associated with the kettle and lamp by Pierre Le Cheaube, was probably part of the large order given to Frederick Kandler by the 2nd Earl of Bristol in 1751. Although the piece was made in 1745 the arms do not seem to have been re-engraved and they must date from the Earl’s accession six years later. Triangular waiters for kettles became fashionable in the 1730s, with large numbers appearing in the early ledgers of George Wickes.[8] They were perfectly suited to the three-legged kettle stands of the period and the shaped gadroon border of this one conformed to the dishes and plates of the Earl’s dinner service. Waiters were often provided for vessels associated with hot water, presumably with the practical intention of containing drips and reducing the risk of overturning. The borders are usually deeper than those intended to be used by a footman to serve, as when delivering wine glasses to the table during dinner (see NT 852097). The survival of some pairs and groups of triangle waiters suggests that they were not just employed for kettles. Three from the fine silver of the Lords King, two by John White of 1734 and a third by Robert Abercromby of 1740, have elaborate flat-chased borders which cannot have been intended to be interrupted by the feet of a lamp frame.[9] James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator January 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 14 & 25, pp. 86-8 & 103] Notes: [1] Rev. S. A. H. Hervey, Letter-Books of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, 1894, vol. 3, p. 147. See also pp. 48, 68 and 152 for similarly vociferous condemnations in letters of 7 July 1729, 5 August 1731and 8 May 1736. Lord Bristol was not alone in his beliefs – see Robin Emmerson, British Tea Pots and Tea Drinking, 1992, pp. 9 and 13. [2] Ibid., p. 48. [3] Jane Pettigrew, A Social History of Tea, 2001, pp. 22-3 and 30, ills. NT inv. nos. 1139006 and 1140034. [4] This occurred in March 1728. See Robert Halsband, Lord Hervey, 1973, p. 76. [5] Beth Carver Wees, English, Irish & Scottish Silver at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1997, cat. 247, pp. 355-7. [6] The tankard was with Wax Antiques, 49 Camden Passage, Islington, London N1 8EA and the orange strainer (identified as a lemon strainer) was sold at Martel Maides, Guernsey, 27 November 2014, lot 438. [7] Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, pp. 578 and 703-4. [8] National Art Library, Garrard Ledgers, VAM 1–3 1735–50. [9] Christie’s, 12 May 1993, lots 148-9. Another pair, by Richard Rugg, 1754, was sold at Sotheby’s Olympia, 6 June 2002, lot 129.