Four soup ladles
Frederick Kandler and Turin
Category
Silver
Date
1752 - c. 1756
Materials
Silver
Measurements
36.5 x 9.4 cm (London); 32.4 x 9.4 (Turin)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852078
Summary
Four soup ladles, two sterling silver, by Frederick Kandler, London, 1752/3, and two silver, Turin, circa 1756. The Kandler ladles were made for use with the oval tureens of the same year (NT 852127) and the Turin copies were to accompany the round tureens made there at the same time (NT 852128). The ladles have deep, almost hemispherical raised bowls soldered to the stems which are cast and chased on both sides with trailing convolvulus, shells, scrollwork and reeding on matted grounds. Beneath the junction of the stems with the bowls are cast and applied shells in scrollwork cartouches. The two pairs are near identical, the only significant differences between them being the execution on those made in Turin of some small, subsidiary leaves on the fronts of the terminals in cast-work rather than the chasing of the originals, and the slightly shorter length of the handles of the Turin pair. Heraldry: Each of the ladles is engraved on the underside of the upper part of the stem with the Hervey crest beneath an earl’s coronet. The engraved crests and coronets on the Turin ladles are of a high quality but are marked out as being done by an Italian rather than an English hand by the angularity of the stems to the balls. Hallmarks: One of those by Frederick Kandler is fully marked on the underside of the stem with the date letter ‘r’, leopard’s head, lion passant and the maker’s mark ‘FK’ in italics beneath a fleur-de-lis (Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, no. 691). The other has the first three the same but no maker’s mark. Each of the later copies has the Turin mint mark of the Savoy cross surmounted by another cross couped in a shield beneath a crown enclosing a trefoil (Augusto Bargoni, ‘Argenti’ in volume 3 of Vittorio Viale (ed.), Mostra del Barocco Piemontese, 3 vols, Turin, 1963, p. 15, no. 79, ill.). Scratchweights: the Kandler pair - ‘11:15’ and ‘11:16’; the Turin pair - ‘14∙18 (crossed through) 14=12’ and ‘oz d [/] 14∙8 (partly crossed through) 14=2’.
Full description
As is evident from the ledgers of George Wickes (part of the Garrard Ledgers, National Art Library) tureens were often supplied with ladles but surviving pairings are now comparatively rare, as are such extravagantly cast stems as these exhibit.[1] The engraved crest and coronet being on the reverse of the stem might suggest that the ladles were to be placed face-down when the table was set, along with all the soup and serving spoons. The engraving of the scratchweights on the same side indicates the opposite, however, and the armorials may just have been forced to the reverse by the lack of space amidst the profuse sculpted decoration of the front. Most other ladles of the period seem to have been designed to be placed face-up, this being more stable and more practicable for the elegant manipulation of such heavy and unwieldy objects.[2] James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator February 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 44, p. 128.] Notes: [1] Another good example is the pair of ladles by Paul de Lamerie of 1747 in the Gilbert Collection at the V&A, accompanying two earlier tureens altered c. 1747. See Timothy Schroder, The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, 1988, cat. 41, pp. 169-74. [2] See for instance those supplied with the tureens of the Earls of Thanet and Milltown in 1743 by Paul de Lamerie and George Wickes respectively, sold Christie’s 5 July 2000, lot 10 and 25 November 2008, lot 39; those of the Leinster (George Wickes, 1747) and Exeter (Edward Wakelin, 1755) dinner services, Elaine Barr, George Wickes, 1980, pp. 203-4, figs. 122 and 123; and those of the Bute service (1758), sold Christie’s 3 July 1996, lot 82. All survive with their contemporary tureens. Exhibited: Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, 1959 (one); British Week, Milan and Frankfurt, October, 1965.
Provenance
George Hervey, 2nd Earl of Bristol (1721-75); by descent to the 4th Marquess of Bristol (1863-1951); accepted by the Treasury in lieu of death duties in 1956 and transferred to the National Trust.
Credit line
Ickworth, the Bristol Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Frederick Kandler and Turin, goldsmith Frederick Kandler, goldsmith