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Lot Essay
QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S 'ANEMONE' TOILET-BOXES
The circular and cinquefoiled 'sarcophagus' powder-boxes (pots de toilette) bear Queen Charlotte's crown-ensigned CR (Carlotta Regina) cipher and are designed in the George III 'Roman' fashion. The Queen's ciphers are engraved on their lids' laurel-strewn and anemone-crowned domes.
The jars were executed in 1771 by the King's 'Principal Goldsmith' Thomas Heming, and he may have been assisted in their design by the Rome-trained court architect Sir William Chambers (d.1796), who had served as architectural tutor to George III, when Prince of Wales, and prided himself as a 'very pretty Connoisseur' in the design of such 'Furniture'. The jars were executed in the same year as Johan Zoffany's delightful portrait of the Queen seated beside a symbolic flower vase of roses and convolvulus. This stands on a 'Roman' marble table, whose golden frame likewise shows Chamber's influence, since its shell-decked console is festooned with Apollo's laurels in a French/Grecian fashion favoured by Chambers (see M.R. Blacker, Flora Domestica, 2000, p.74).
This superb service of silver gilt toilet plate is thought to have been commissioned by the Queen herself, as they are not listed in the Jewel House records. In the 1819 sale, most of the service, including the 'noble large toilet glass', toilet and basin of 'elegant shape', candlesticks formed as 'figures of Flora' and a pair of large scalloped toilet boxes were purchased by Earl Grosvenor, and these remain in the collection of the Dukes of Westminster. A further toilet box (bought in 1819 by Goldney for £54) and richly chased salver (bought by the Earl of Yarmouth for £73 15s 6d) are probably those acquired by Queen Mary before 1904, which are now in the Royal Collection (J. Roberts, George III and Queen Charlotte, London, 2004, nos. 383-4).
THE ORNAMENT
These 'Vanitas' emblems of wind-puffed anemones - or 'British Kin Anemone' (R. Furber, Twelve Months of Flowers and Fruit, c.1732) - also signify 'Love's triumph' and recall the History of Venus and Adonis as recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses, or Loves of the Gods. Such subjects, evoking the 'toilette' of Venus as nature deity and goddess of beauty, were particularly popular for seventeenth century toilet-services embossed with figurative subjects in the Louis Quatorze 'Roman' fashion. Here flowers in 'Venus shell' carriages are also chased on the box sides amongst the wave-scrolled tendrils of Roman foliage clasping the foils. Acanthus leaves likewise wrap the lids, whose rims are gadrooned in reeds, recalling the Arcadian deity Pan, and are echoed by those on the flowered salver rims. These acanthus leaves grow from the boxes' rippled and antique-fluted bases, and serve to recall the myth of the Corinthian order of Architecture originating in antiquity from an acanthus-wrapped basket. The central compartments of the scalloped and octafoiled salvers display the Queen's cipher, engraved in foliated letters of laurel-flowered acanthus, while the edges are engraved with laurel-wreathed shells alternating with acanthus leaves in ribbon-scrolled and antique-stippled cartouches.
THOMAS HEMING
Thomas Heming was the son of a Midlands merchant and was apprenticed in 1738 to the goldsmith Edmund Bodington, but on the same day was turned over to Peter Archambo. A. G. Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, London, 1982, p.543., describes his early work as showing 'a French delicacy of taste and refinement of execution which is unquestionably inherited from his master Archambo'. He registered his first mark in 1745 and soon acquired many good clients including John, 3rd Earl of Bute, for whom he was to supply large quantities of plate. Most importantly for Heming, it was Bute's relationship with George, Prince of Wales, later George III, that was to lead to Heming's appointment in 1760 as Principal Goldsmith to the King. He was to hold this post until 1782, when he was forced to resign after a malicious campaign to discredit him through accusations of excessive charges. Bank accounts at Messers Campbell and Coutts record the separate account administered by Bute which was used for the purchase of plate for the King.
The circular and cinquefoiled 'sarcophagus' powder-boxes (pots de toilette) bear Queen Charlotte's crown-ensigned CR (Carlotta Regina) cipher and are designed in the George III 'Roman' fashion. The Queen's ciphers are engraved on their lids' laurel-strewn and anemone-crowned domes.
The jars were executed in 1771 by the King's 'Principal Goldsmith' Thomas Heming, and he may have been assisted in their design by the Rome-trained court architect Sir William Chambers (d.1796), who had served as architectural tutor to George III, when Prince of Wales, and prided himself as a 'very pretty Connoisseur' in the design of such 'Furniture'. The jars were executed in the same year as Johan Zoffany's delightful portrait of the Queen seated beside a symbolic flower vase of roses and convolvulus. This stands on a 'Roman' marble table, whose golden frame likewise shows Chamber's influence, since its shell-decked console is festooned with Apollo's laurels in a French/Grecian fashion favoured by Chambers (see M.R. Blacker, Flora Domestica, 2000, p.74).
This superb service of silver gilt toilet plate is thought to have been commissioned by the Queen herself, as they are not listed in the Jewel House records. In the 1819 sale, most of the service, including the 'noble large toilet glass', toilet and basin of 'elegant shape', candlesticks formed as 'figures of Flora' and a pair of large scalloped toilet boxes were purchased by Earl Grosvenor, and these remain in the collection of the Dukes of Westminster. A further toilet box (bought in 1819 by Goldney for £54) and richly chased salver (bought by the Earl of Yarmouth for £73 15s 6d) are probably those acquired by Queen Mary before 1904, which are now in the Royal Collection (J. Roberts, George III and Queen Charlotte, London, 2004, nos. 383-4).
THE ORNAMENT
These 'Vanitas' emblems of wind-puffed anemones - or 'British Kin Anemone' (R. Furber, Twelve Months of Flowers and Fruit, c.1732) - also signify 'Love's triumph' and recall the History of Venus and Adonis as recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses, or Loves of the Gods. Such subjects, evoking the 'toilette' of Venus as nature deity and goddess of beauty, were particularly popular for seventeenth century toilet-services embossed with figurative subjects in the Louis Quatorze 'Roman' fashion. Here flowers in 'Venus shell' carriages are also chased on the box sides amongst the wave-scrolled tendrils of Roman foliage clasping the foils. Acanthus leaves likewise wrap the lids, whose rims are gadrooned in reeds, recalling the Arcadian deity Pan, and are echoed by those on the flowered salver rims. These acanthus leaves grow from the boxes' rippled and antique-fluted bases, and serve to recall the myth of the Corinthian order of Architecture originating in antiquity from an acanthus-wrapped basket. The central compartments of the scalloped and octafoiled salvers display the Queen's cipher, engraved in foliated letters of laurel-flowered acanthus, while the edges are engraved with laurel-wreathed shells alternating with acanthus leaves in ribbon-scrolled and antique-stippled cartouches.
THOMAS HEMING
Thomas Heming was the son of a Midlands merchant and was apprenticed in 1738 to the goldsmith Edmund Bodington, but on the same day was turned over to Peter Archambo. A. G. Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837, London, 1982, p.543., describes his early work as showing 'a French delicacy of taste and refinement of execution which is unquestionably inherited from his master Archambo'. He registered his first mark in 1745 and soon acquired many good clients including John, 3rd Earl of Bute, for whom he was to supply large quantities of plate. Most importantly for Heming, it was Bute's relationship with George, Prince of Wales, later George III, that was to lead to Heming's appointment in 1760 as Principal Goldsmith to the King. He was to hold this post until 1782, when he was forced to resign after a malicious campaign to discredit him through accusations of excessive charges. Bank accounts at Messers Campbell and Coutts record the separate account administered by Bute which was used for the purchase of plate for the King.