Oval tureen dish
Category
Silver
Date
circa 1756
Materials
Silver
Measurements
4.8 x 57.5 x 36.5 cm
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852080.5
Summary
Oval tureen dish, silver, Turin, circa 1756. One of two, associated with the oval tureens of 1752-3 by Frederick Kandler (NT 852127). See also the Turinese round tureens and their dishes of circa 1756 (NT 852128 & 852105). The dish is raised and has a flat oval well and a broad rim with a shaped border applied with cast and chased gadrooning. Two large cast and chased shells are applied as handles. Heraldry: Engraved on the rim of the dish are the quartered shield, supporters and motto of the 2nd Earl of Bristol in an ermine mantling and beneath an earl’s coronet. The engraving is Italian (see NT 852078).
Full description
Not only did George Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol discover that he needed additional tureens when he came to Turin (see NT 852128 & 852105) but he must also have realised that he could not present them or their oval equivalents at table without dishes beneath them as stands. These were not uncommon in Britain and had been regularly supplied by the Jewel Office and George Wickes since the 1720s but they were by no means universal in use, even in the most elevated and fashionable of households. Thus, although the future 1st Duke of Leinster was in advance of his times in having matching dishes for his tureens in 1747, the Marquis of Granby did not have them for the ‘Fine Tureens’ of his dinner service of 1750.[1] French examples were by this time often ornamented specifically to suit the tureens that were to stand on them, as that made by Étienne-Jacques Marcq in 1755 now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.[2] This meant that they had no other practical use which, combined with the large amount of workmanship and their consequent cost, probably militated against Lord Bristol commissioning anything on such lines. His tureen dishes therefore matched exactly the dishes he had already commissioned from Frederick Kandler (NT 852080.1 & 3) and as a consequence their intended primary purpose was soon forgotten. Tureen stands never became universal in Britain and the 2nd Earl’s successors had ceased to record these ones as such by 1811, when the future 1st Marquess’s plate was listed.[3] Fortunately, however, the round dishes were noted as being for the Turin tureens on the death of the 4th Marquess [4] and an inspection of the oval pair revealed they had been marked by the feet of the Kandler tureens. James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator February 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 55, pp. 140-41.] Notes: [1] National Art Library, Garrard Ledgers, VAM 3 1747–50, ff. 1 and 166. [2] Claude Frégnac (ed.), Les grands orfèvres de Louis XVIII à Charles X, 1965, p. 160, ill. [3] Suffolk Record Office, 941/75/1, list of plate belonging to the 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol, 1811-40. [4] Suffolk Record Office, HA 507/9/21, list of silver offered in lieu of death duties following the death of the 4th Marquess of Bristol, c.1951, p. 9.
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)
Marks and inscriptions
Underside: Hallmarks: assay mark of Bartolomeo Pagliani, the Savoy cross in a shield flanked by ‘B P’ with a closed crown above (see Gianfranco Fina & Luca Mana, Argenti Sabauda del XVIII Secolo, 2012, p. 248). Underside: Scratchweight: ‘A oz d [/] 74 ∆ 18 [/] 73 = 15’