A Rare George II gold and enamel calendar

BY ANTHONY TREGENT, LONDON, 1759

細節

A Rare George II gold and enamel calendar
by Anthony Tregent, London, 1759
The rectangular gold frame with scrolling border enamelled in translucent green on an engine-turned gold ground and pierced with twelve oval scrolling cartouches containing enamelled plaques painted with the Signs of the Zodiac en grisaille and embossed with floral swags, a crescent and a sun, containing a rectangular white London enamel plaque with a calendar for the year 1759 inscribed 'A NEW YEAR'S GIFT, for 1759', with an orange one penny duty stamp reproduced in the bottom right-hand corner and signed 'by Anth: Tregent in Denmark Street', the reverse covered with brown silk, small plaques a little loose in the mounts
6 9/16in. (165mm.) high
One penny duty was payable on newsprint from 1757 during the Seven Year's War.

來源

Almost certainly presented to John, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-1792), possibly by George, Prince of Wales, later George III

拍品專文

A notice in the Daily Advertiser of 23 December 1758 described Anthony Tregent as the inventor of the enamel 'New Year's Gift' and warns that anyone imitating the calendars, each of which bore the duty stamp, would be in breach of patent and liable to prosecution. However, it is worth noting that John Sadler placed the following advertisement in the Liverpool Chronicle of 8 December 1758: 'John Sadler, by whom is just published and sold A NEW YEAR'S GIFT FOR 1759 being a snuff-box on which is enamelled a complete ALMANAC for the year 1759'. (E. Stanley Price, John Sadler (1948) p.80. c.f. The Mullens Collection, Christie's London, 18 March, 1987, lots 407, 409, 410).

Anthony Tregent was born in Geneva in 1721. One of three brothers who settled in London, he is the best known of all London suppliers of copper-based enamels as he signed a number of extant examples. He seems to have specialised in snuff-boxes, transfer-printed in monochrome for specific occasions, such as almanacs for 1758/1760 which give the fixed and moveable feasts and the eclipses of the sun and moon. A snuff-box in the British Museum is signed by him and inscribed 'A New Years Gift', with date 1759 as on the current almanac.