拍品專文
The tureens, with reed-gadrooned rims displaying Venus's shell badege and palm-scrolled feet terminating in Bacchic lion-paws, are designed in the French/Grecian style popularised by the connoisseur Thomas Hope and the feet pattern derives from his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807, pl.52. The tureens formed part of the display plate at the Travellers Club, which was founded in 1819 "to form a point of reunion for gentleman who have travelled abroad and to afford them the opportunity of inviting as honorary visitors the principal members of all foreign missions and travellers of distinction". The celebrated traveller and classical scholar J.B.S. Morritt (d.1843) was amongst the founding members, who at a meeting held in July 1819 voted that the Club's badge should be "The Head of Ulysses". The Greek Odysseus, called Ulysses by the Romans, was the hero of Homer's epic The Odyssey, whioch recounted his return to Ithaca after the Trojan War.