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Lot Essay
Mustard sauce had long been a stable of British cuisine, By the late 17th century dry mustard was dispensed from silver casters with a blind cover. The innovation of a finely ground mustard flour in the 1720s, a virtual monopoly for which was held by a Mrs. Clements of Durham, coincided with the emergence of the mustard pot we recognise today.
The prototype for this mustard pot is one of the two earliest recorded surviving English silver mustard pots; one of a pair, by Jacob Margas of 1724, part of Horatio,1st Baron Walpole of Wolterton's ambassadorial plate for his embassy to Paris in 1724. Listed in the Jewel House Records as 'Two Cruett Frames , 2 mustard barrils & 2 spoons 109 [oz.] 10 [dwt] 0 [gr], Jewel House Delivery Book, PRO Mss. LC9/44, f. 330, one sold by a descendent at Christie’s on 13 May 1953, lot 137, see H. G. Bernard, Country Life, 'Five Centuries of Mustard Pots, vol. 128, 1960, p. 338. The 2nd Baron Walpole no doubt commissioned a further mustard pot, or more, in 1757 to match. A closely related mustard pot, also of 1724, attributed to Paul de Lamerie, was published in E. A. Jones, 'More Old Plate in the Collection of the Most Hon. the Marquess of Sligo', The Connoisseur, vols 65-67, p. 158, fig iv.
The prototype for this mustard pot is one of the two earliest recorded surviving English silver mustard pots; one of a pair, by Jacob Margas of 1724, part of Horatio,1st Baron Walpole of Wolterton's ambassadorial plate for his embassy to Paris in 1724. Listed in the Jewel House Records as 'Two Cruett Frames , 2 mustard barrils & 2 spoons 109 [oz.] 10 [dwt] 0 [gr], Jewel House Delivery Book, PRO Mss. LC9/44, f. 330, one sold by a descendent at Christie’s on 13 May 1953, lot 137, see H. G. Bernard, Country Life, 'Five Centuries of Mustard Pots, vol. 128, 1960, p. 338. The 2nd Baron Walpole no doubt commissioned a further mustard pot, or more, in 1757 to match. A closely related mustard pot, also of 1724, attributed to Paul de Lamerie, was published in E. A. Jones, 'More Old Plate in the Collection of the Most Hon. the Marquess of Sligo', The Connoisseur, vols 65-67, p. 158, fig iv.