Tumbler
possibly Henry Allain (b. c.1699)
Category
Silver
Date
1755 - 1756
Materials
Silver
Measurements
5.4 cm (Height); 6.7 cm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Paris
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852089
Summary
Tumbler, silver, possibly by Henry Allain, Paris, 1755/6. The raised tumbler is of more upright form than the norm and has a dimpled base. Two parallel lines are engraved beneath the slightly flaring rim which has an applied moulding. Heraldry: The contemporary engraving on the side of the tumbler shows the motto and arms (Hervey with Lepel in pretence) in a lozenge of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey as a widow, in an ermine mantling and beneath a baron’s coronet.
Full description
Tumblers were primarily used for spirits such as brandy and were often part of the travelling equipment of the wealthy in the eighteenth century.[1] As such they were for personal use and this one would have accompanied Lady Hervey during the latter part of her active and sociable widowhood. She was an enthusiastic Francophile and resided in Paris for long periods in the first half of the 1750s. It must have been during the last of these sojourns, which began in mid May 1755, that Lady Hervey commissioned, or was given, this tumbler.[2] The engraving of the arms is noticeably more assured than that on her English pieces though the foreign hand of the craftsman is revealed by his depiction of the finial of the coronet’s velvet cap as a ball rather than a tuft. The tumbler does not appear in any of the nineteenth-century plate lists and is likely to have been among the substantial quantity of family objects retrieved by Theodora, Marchioness of Bristol, many of them from the Bruces of Downhill in County Londonderry who had inherited from the 4th Earl. James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator January 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 24, p. 102.] Notes: [1] Timothy Schroder, British and Continental Silver and Gold in the Ashmolean Museum, 2009, p. 64 and G. Bernard Hughes, Small Antique Silverware, 1957, p. 115. [2] J. W. Croker (ed.), Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 1821, p. 211.
Provenance
Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey (1706-1768); probably by descent to the 4th Earl of Bristol (1730-1803) and removed by him to Ireland, thereby passing to the Bruce family; probably reacquired by Theodora, Marchioness of Bristol (1875-1957); accepted by the Treasury in lieu of death duties in 1956 and transferred to the National Trust.
Marks and inscriptions
Underside: Hallmarks: Marked with a crowned ‘A’ between palm and laurel branches for Paris, warden’s mark of a crowned ‘P’ for 1755/6 and a mis-struck maker’s mark, possibly that of Henry Allain (Henry Nocq, Le poinçon de Paris, 1926–31, vol. 1, p. 7), a fleur-de-lis crowned, two grains, the letters ‘HA’ and an orb. Underside: Scratchweight: '1=18'
Makers and roles
possibly Henry Allain (b. c.1699), goldsmith