THE TUCKER-DAYRELL CUP: An Important Elizabeth I parcel-gilt Silver Cup and cover

LONDON, 1598, MAKER'S MARK IE ABOVE THREE PELLETS (JACKSON, P. 104, MARK 13)

Details

THE TUCKER-DAYRELL CUP: An Important Elizabeth I parcel-gilt Silver Cup and cover
London, 1598, maker's mark IE above three pellets (Jackson, p. 104, mark 13)
Of gourd form, on domed circular foot with stamped tongue-and-dart rim, the stem realistically formed as a twisted branch between two calices of acanthus, the cover surmounted by a spool supporting a classical female figure holding a shield, the foot, cup, and cover engraved with radiating lines within borders, the rim prick-engraved with a coat-of-arms and crest within foliate mantling, the foot engraved with a lozenge-of-arms within a shield, the finial engraved with a coat-of-arms impaling another below a crest, fully marked on rim and cover, with scratch weight "26 oz 4 d"

The arms on the rim are those of Tucker
The arms on the foot are those of a lady of the Tucker family
The arms on the finial are those of Darrell impaling Tucker

The underside of the base is engraved with an inscription:
"Francis Tucker Daughter to George Tucker Wife to Richard Dayrell gives this to her Son and male Posterity. It antiently belonging to ye sd Tuckers of Milton in Kent but is now to remain with the Dayrells of Lillingston Dayrell in Bucks."
14 3/4 in. (37.5 cm.)
26 oz. (809 gr.)

Provenance

The inscription under the base was engraved for Frances Tucker (baptized at Port Royal, Bermuda, in 1654), who married Richard Dayrell (d. 1704) of Lillingston-Dayrell, Buckinghamshire, on November 30, 1674.

Frances Tucker-Dayrell had descended from George Tucker II of Gravesend and Milton, Kent, Prime Searcher of the Port of Gravesend. He married as his second wife Mary, daughter of Sir John Darrell of Calehill, Kent in 1598, the year that this cup was made. It is possible that this Tucker-Dayrell marriage, the first of six marriages between these two families over the next 75 years, was the occasion for the commission of this cup.

The cup was apparently taken to Bermuda by George Tucker IV of Milton and Crayford, Kent, father of Frances Tucker Dayrell, who moved to Bermuda during the Commonwealth. The cup descended from Frances Dayrell, according to her wishes, through the Dayrells of Lillingston-Dayrell, Buckinghamshire, until 1888, when Alexander Mackay, a collector, purchased it for his wife who was a member of the Tucker family. Its subsequent provenance is as follows:

Mrs. Alexander Mackay, Deceased, Late of The Grange, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, sold at Christie's, London, December 14, 1920
lot 62, 535 to S.J. Phillips
Ernest R. Innes, sold at Christie's, London,
December 11, 1935, lot 122

After its sale at Christie's in 1935, the cup was again purchased by the Tucker-Darrell family of Bermuda, where it has descended to the present owner.

Exhibited

Late Elizabethan Art, Burlington Fine Arts Club,
London, 1926

Lot Essay

Standing cups of gourd form enjoyed a brief period of popularity in England; the twenty or so known examples range in date from 1570-1611. The design of these cups was based on a traditional German form, made familiar to the English through imported examples, printed design books, and perhaps most important, German immigrant craftsmen in London. Ronald Lightbown, in Tudor Domestic Silver, records that a German visitor to London wrote in 1613 that "the goldsmiths in London were [until recently] nearly all Germans." The popularity of the gourd-form cup is underscored by the fact that seven out of the twenty extant examples remain in Moscow (six are at the Kremlin), presumably given as diplomatic gifts along with other important late Tudor silver in German style. Timothy Schroder suggests that the English gourd-form cup marked in 1585 at the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius near Moscow may have been brought to Russia by Sir Jerome Horsey on an ambassadorial embassy of 1586 (The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, 1988, p.68).

The maker's mark on this cup, IE with three pellets below, appears on two other gourd-form cups hallmarked in 1602 and 1611, each with cast vine stem apparently identical to the present stem (illustrated in N.M. Penzer, "The Steeple Cup II," Apollo, vol. 71, April 1960, pp.104-106; there are also two more gourd-form cups by this maker, dated 1594 and 1598, recorded but not illustrated.) The maker IE also made numerous steeple cups in Penzer's survey.

The gourd-form cup is further discussed in Timothy Schroder's essay on the Wilbraham Cup in the Gilbert Collection catalogue cited above. The Wilbraham Cup, of similar form and dated 1585, sold at Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, March 20, 1970, lot 202.