Table spoon
Paul Callard
Category
Silver
Date
1758 - 1759
Materials
Sterling silver
Measurements
4.3 cm (Width); 20.3 cm (Length)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852099.13
Summary
Table spoon, sterling silver, by Paul Callard, London, 1758/9. One of twenty-nine by various makers and of various dates, twelve of them by Callard of this date. 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 quartered arms of the Hanoverian monarchs (pre-1801) within the Garter and beneath an imperial crown flanked by the initials GR.
Full description
George Hervey, 2nd Earl of Bristol (1721-75) had commissioned new flatware c. 1751, of which only one table spoon survives (NT 852099.1). Three dozen matching table spoons (NT 852099.2-18), forks (NT 852099.36-44) and knives (NT 852203.5-10) came to the Earl in 1758 as part of his allocation of ambassadorial plate. Of the table spoons seventeen remain at Ickworth, five marked by Ebenezer Coker for 1751/2 and thus probably from stock, and the remaining twelve by Paul Callard, 1758/9. He would have needed such a large overall number as the English custom was to change them each time a plate was removed,[1] and he had ten dozen plates. For his cutlery and flatware the Earl did not expend any more than he needed to on fashion, sticking to the simplest of forms. With his shrewd assessment of where display would count he must have decided that the diner’s eye would not be sufficiently resting on the implements they were using and would be drawn more by the dishes and tureens containing the fine food they were feasting upon. It was, anyway, very unusual for more decoration to be applied to knives and flatware at this time in England, an exception being the early 1740s table service of the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, made partly in Paris and partly by Paul Crespin in London.[2] 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.[3] All the surviving forks and spoons and six of the knives came to the National Trust in 1956. James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator January 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 63, pp. 149-50.] [1] Madame van Muyden (ed.), A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I & George II: The Letters of Monsieur César de Saussure to his Family, 1902, p. 222. [2] Christopher Hartop, The Huguenot Legacy: English Silver 1680-1760, 1996, p. 101, ill. [3] Suffolk Record Office, HA 507/9/21, List of silver etc offered in lieu of death duties, c.1951, pp. 6 and 16.
Provenance
Jewel Office; allocated to George Hervey, 2nd Earl of Bristol (1721-75) as Ambassador to Madrid 1758; discharged to Lord Bristol 9 April 1759; by descent to the 4th Marquess of Bristol: 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: date letter ‘C’, leopard’s head, lion passant and maker’s mark ‘PC’ beneath two mullets and above a fleur-de-lis (Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, no. 2150) for Paul Callard.
Makers and roles
Paul Callard, goldsmith