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Lot Essay
Edward Elliston was in the Marine Service of the East India Company. From 1714 to 1721, he served on Dartmouth as 5th, 3rd, and finally 1st mate. He became Captain of the ship Lynn in 1724, serving intermittently until 1732. His wife Catherine was the daughter of Edward Gibbon, a Director of the South Sea Company. His only surviving child Catherine married Edward Eliot, 1st Baron Eliot of St. Germans, and her son was created 1st Earl of St. Germans.
This salver, with its exquisite cast Bacchic border, belongs to a group of this model marked by Lamerie dating between 1739 and 1745. Besides the present example, the only other salver of 1739 known is the Pemberton salver from the Al Tajir collection (The Glory of the Goldsmith: Magnificent Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, 1989, no. 80, pp. 112-113).
The general arrangement of the openwork border with grapevine punctuated by four Bacchic masks was adopted by other London makers in the mid 1740s and remained in fashion through various interpretations until the 1760s.
The cache of drawings discovered in 2004 and attributed to Lamerie's virtuoso modeller, the "Maynard Master," includes a design for a salver of this form. See Ellenor Alcorn, Beyond the Maker's Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection, 2006, pp. 99-100. Another salver of this type by Lamerie of 1743, formerly in the collection of William Randolph Hearst, is illustrated in Susan Hare, Paul de Lamerie, 1990, Goldsmiths' Hall exh. cat., no. 112, p. 165.
This salver, with its exquisite cast Bacchic border, belongs to a group of this model marked by Lamerie dating between 1739 and 1745. Besides the present example, the only other salver of 1739 known is the Pemberton salver from the Al Tajir collection (The Glory of the Goldsmith: Magnificent Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, 1989, no. 80, pp. 112-113).
The general arrangement of the openwork border with grapevine punctuated by four Bacchic masks was adopted by other London makers in the mid 1740s and remained in fashion through various interpretations until the 1760s.
The cache of drawings discovered in 2004 and attributed to Lamerie's virtuoso modeller, the "Maynard Master," includes a design for a salver of this form. See Ellenor Alcorn, Beyond the Maker's Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection, 2006, pp. 99-100. Another salver of this type by Lamerie of 1743, formerly in the collection of William Randolph Hearst, is illustrated in Susan Hare, Paul de Lamerie, 1990, Goldsmiths' Hall exh. cat., no. 112, p. 165.