Table spoon
Dru Drury (b.1688)
Category
Silver
Date
1745 - 1746
Materials
Silver
Measurements
4.3 cm (Width); 20 cm (Length)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852099.1
Summary
Table spoon, sterling silver, by Dru Drury I, London, 1745/6. One of twenty nine by various makers and of various dates. The spoon is forged from a single piece of silver. It is of the Hanoverian single-drop pattern with raised egg-shaped bowl, plain, tapering stem and single drop at the junction with the bowl. The terminal is upturned on the bowl side with a slight rib. It is engraved on the reverse of the head of the stem with the Hervey crest beneath an earl’s coronet.
Full description
This table spoon by Dru Drury I of 1745/6 is the only survivor at Ickworth of a service of spoons and forks that probably extended to seven dozen to match the quantity of plates commissioned c.1751 (NT 852124). Whether some had been acquired in the mid 1740s or they were merely from stock and formed part of the 1751–2 order from Frederick Kandler is not known. The same pattern was followed for subsequent commissions of table spoons by the 2nd Earl of Bristol (852099.2-29). By 1811 there were forty-eight of this pattern of knife and fork remaining, and thirty-six spoons. They had diminished to twenty-four, nine and twenty-seven by 1951.[1] All the surviving forks and spoons and six of the knives came to the National Trust in 1956. [1] Suffolk Record Office, HA 507/9/21, List of silver etc offered in lieu of death duties, c.1951, pp. 6 and 16. James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator January 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 26, p. 104]
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
Stem: Hallmarks: maker’s mark ‘DD’ (Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, no. 455), lion passant, leopard’s head and date letter ‘k’.
Makers and roles
Dru Drury (b.1688), goldsmith