MARK OF PAUL DE LAMERIE, LONDON, 1739

EDWARD ELLISTON
Edward Elliston was the son of Oliver Elliston (1664-1706) of Gestingthorpe, Essex and his wife Hester Gibbon. George entered the Marine Service of the East India Company. From 1714 to 1721 he served on Dartmouth becoming first mate. In 1724 he became Captain of the ship Lynn, serving intermittently until 1732. He married his cousin Catherine Gibbon, daughter of Edward Gibbon, a director of the South Sea Company. Her nephew was Edward Gibbon, the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his autobiography Gibbon describes Elliston as 'a Gentleman who had acquired a competent fortune for those times in the service of the East India Company'. According to Gibbon, George and Catherine's only surviving child, Catherine (b.1735) 'possessed, on the day of her own marriage, of more than sixty thousand pounds'. She married Edward Craggs-Eliot, 1st Baron Eliot of St. Germans, and in 1815 their son was created 1st Earl of St. Germans, with a special remainder to his brother as neither of his two wives bore any children.

Elliston's obituary, published in the General Advertiser on 11 June 1747, p. 1, noted 'On Monday last died, at his Seat near Brentwood in Essex, after a tedious Indisposition, Edward Elliston, Esq; a Gentleman possess'd of a very plentiful Fortune, which he chiefly acquir'd with very great Credit and Reputation, in the Service of the East-India Company.'

THE SALVER DESIGN AND THE 'MAYNARD MASTER'
This salver, with its exquisite cast Bacchic border with Silenus masks, belongs to a select group of similarly modelled salvers created by Lamerie between 1739 and 1745. In addition to the present example the only other salver of 1739 known is the Pemberton salver formerly in the Al Tajir Collection, see The Glory of the Goldsmith: Magnificent Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, London, 1989, no. 80, pp. 112-113. The arrangement of the cast openwork border with beautifully modelled grapevines adorned by four Bacchic masks was later adopted by other top London makers of the mid 1740s. The form remained in fashion through various interpretations until the 1760s. A 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.

The existence of this unnamed artist, working in Lamerie's workshop from around 1736 to the early 1740s, was first suggested by the master silversmith and silver historian Ubaldo Vitali. The work of the Maynard Master is typified by putti with distressed or plaintive expressions; spiralled buds, known as 'cinnamon bun' scrolls, and wilted lion's heads resting on their paws, see Ellenor Alcorn, Beyond the Maker's Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 99-100. Another salver of this type by de Lamerie of 1743, formerly in the collection of William Randolph Hearst, is illustrated in Susan Hare, Paul de Lamerie, London, 1990, Goldsmiths' Hall exhibition catalogue, no. 112, p. 165.

Catherine Elliston, Lady Eliot (1735-1804). © Eliots of Port Eliot