Six waiters
Frederick Kandler
Category
Silver
Date
1754 - 1755
Materials
Silver
Measurements
2.5 cm (Height); 18.1 cm (Diameter)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852097
Summary
Six waiters, silver, two of sterling standard by Frederick Kandler, London, 1754/5 and four probably by Frederick Kandler of the same date, reworked from pieces of 1711/12 by Lewis Mettayer. The circular waiters are raised with shallow rims and cast and applied shaped, gadrooned borders. Each has three shell and scroll feet, those on the pair marked by Kandler being soldered whilst on the others they are riveted. Heraldry: The centre of each waiter is engraved with the quartered shield, supporters and motto of the 2nd Earl of Bristol within an ermine mantling and beneath an earl’s coronet. Hallmarks: Nos. 5 and 6 are fully marked on the underside with the leopard’s head, date letter ‘t’, lion passant and maker’s mark ‘FK’ in italics beneath a fleur-de-lis (Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, no. 691). Nos. 1–4, which are duty dodgers, have on their undersides the partly distorted marks of the old pieces reworked by Kandler: maker’s mark ‘ME’ beneath two sickles and a sheath of corn (Grimwade 1990, no. 2018) for Lewis Mettayer, Britannia, leopard’s head erased and date letter ‘Q’ for 1711. Scratchweights: ‘N1 [/] 9=7’, ‘N2 [/] 9=12’, ‘N3 [/] 8=19’, ‘N4 [/] 9=5’, ‘No: 5 [/] 9=2’, ‘No: 6 9=7’
Full description
Small waiters with shallow rims such as these were intended for the service of wine and other drinks at meals. The equivalents amongst the 2nd Earl of Warrington’s plate, also six in number, were recorded by him in 1750 as ‘small Waiters … to give drink on’.[1] Their three feet kept them stable and raised them up sufficiently for the footman to easily insert his fingers when lifting from the table [2] whilst their shallow rims allowed him to clamp the glass by placing his thumb on its base. Once at the table the thumb would be released and the diner could take the proffered glass direct from the silver waiter without making physical contact with the servant. This process would have been constant during dinner as, although by the middle of the century it was becoming fashionable to leave glasses on the table rather than immediately draining their contents in a toast, it was still not considered acceptable to refill a glass without first rinsing and buffing it at the sideboard.[3] Jonathan Swift, in his satirical Directions to servants of 1745 gives some sense of how wine should be served by describing how it should not: 'When you carry a Glass of Liquor to any Person who hath called for it, do not bob him on the Shoulder, or cry, Sir, or Madam, here’s the Glass; that would be unmannerly, as if you had a Mind to force it down one’s Throat; but stand at the Person’s Right Shoulder and wait his Time; and if he strikes it down with his Elbow by Forgetfulness, that was his Fault and not yours.'[4] Kandler was quite clearly dodging the plate duty of 6d per ounce by refashioning old pieces of Lord Bristol’s plate for four of the waiters, carefully preserving the 1711 Mettayer hallmarks in the process. Interestingly, there is evidence on the undersides of a former fitting which was probably to allow for screwing onto an epergne or surtout arm. If this was the case then these waiters could previously have been the saucers on the de Lamerie epergne, and would thus have been reused by him from an earlier set perhaps sent in for exchange by the Earl of Scarsdale (see NT 852084 for a general note on the epergne). The Wickes ledgers contain evidence of a similar reuse of old saucers on the epergne provided to the 2nd Earl of Macclesfield in February 1739.[5] Potentially, therefore, these four waiters represent a case of double duty dodging. Waiters were commonly in two or three sizes, such as the set supplied by Kandler to John Chute of The Vyne in Hampshire in 1769. That consisted of one very large waiter, weighing 80oz 16dwt, two medium-sized with a combined weight of 97oz 4dwt (see NT 2900097) and a diameter of 15¼ inches, and three small at 28oz 3dwt which would have been for the service of wine.[6] There must have been a similar gradation amongst the Bristol plate but by 1811 only these six small waiters survived plus a later, footless set of four with a diameter of 13½ inches (NT 852120). James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator April 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 51, p. 135.] Notes: [1] James Lomax and James Rothwell, Country House Silver from Dunham Massey, 2006, cat. 16, p. 66. [2] Ibid. [3] Rev. John Trusler (ed.), Principles of politeness and knowing the world; by the late Lord Chesterfield, London 1775, p. 65; and Trusler, The honours of the table, London 1788, p. 13. [4] Jonathan Swift, Directions to servants, London 1745, p. 53. [5] National Art Library, Garrard Ledgers, VAM 1 1735–40, f. 182. Lord Macclesfield’s epergne was entirely new apart from its four saucers for which the only charge was 10 shillings for the addition of silver. [6] Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, ref. 31M57/638, receipt from Frederick Kandler for plate, 2 March 1774. I am grateful to Vanessa Brett who transcribed the receipt and gave me a copy.
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, goldsmith