LONDON, CIRCA 1740, WITH TRANSPOSED MARKS OF PAUL DE LAMERIE, 1723

Paul de Lamerie made several versions of this cruet frame; one from 1727 is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (illustrated in Timothy Schroder, British and Continental Gold and Silver in the Ashmolean Museum, 2009, no. 134, pp. 352-354). The rococo decoration and scroll handles on the present example suggest a manufacture date of at least 1735; Lamerie evidently inserted his own marks from an earlier piece in order to avoid duty. Lamerie, like many silversmiths in the high-tax period from 1738 to 1757, produced a fair amount of "duty dodgers" such as this cruet.