Punch ladle
Louis Laroche
Category
Silver
Date
1738 - 1739
Materials
Sterling silver and wood.
Measurements
2.9 x 7.6 x 35.2 cm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852192
Summary
Punch ladle, sterling silver, by Louis Laroche, London, 1738/9. Wooden handle. The ovoid bowl is raised and has a shaped pouring lip to one side. A silver, faceted stem is soldered to the bowl at right angles to the lip and at its other end joined to a seamed tube with cast, moulded terminals. The turned wooden handle is fitted into the tube of the stem. The bowl is distorted and slightly split at the junction with the stem. Heraldry: The front of the bowl has been engraved c.1744 with the lozenge of arms and motto of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey as a widow in an ermine mantling and beneath a baron’s coronet.
Full description
Early-eighteenth-century punch ladles, which are marked out by their plain bowls, single pouring lips and turned wooden handles, are comparatively rare survivals.[1] This one could have been associated with either a silver or a ceramic bowl, there being no evidence either way. The 1st Earl of Bristol is known to have purchased ‘a large china punch-bowl’, paying £3 5s for it ‘with a large jarr & two white cupps for dear wife’ on 1 March 1690.[2] Lady Hervey probably acquired the ladle second-hand following Lord Hervey’s death, when the family plate, including that bought by her husband, went to their eldest son along with the St James’s Square house. On her death in 1768 it would have passed, with the rest of her plate, to the 2nd Earl.[3] James Rothwell, Decorative Arts Curator January 2021 [Adapted from James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection, London 2017, cat. 21, p. 99.] [1] Ian Pickford, Silver Flatware: English Irish and Scottish 1660-1980, 1983, p. 188. [2] Rev. S. A. H. Hervey, The Diary of John Hervey, First Earl of Bristol, 1894, p. 139. [3] Suffolk Record Office, HA 507 May 10, Probate copy of the Will of Mary, Lady Hervey. Written 28 May 1768; codicil 28 May 1768; proven 15 September 1768.
Provenance
Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey (1706-68); 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 of bowl: Hallmarks: date letter ‘C’, leopard’s head, lion passant and maker’s mark ‘LL’ with lion below and crown above (Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, 1990, no. 1941).
Makers and roles
Louis Laroche, goldsmith