A silver tea and coffee service

MAKER'S MARK OF JOHN BRIDGE, LONDON, 1831, THE TEAPOT, 1829

細節

A silver tea and coffee service
maker's mark of John Bridge, London, 1831, the teapot, 1829
Each vase-shaped and on spreading circular foot, the bodies inset with cast plaques, comprising a coffee pot, teapot, two-handled sugar bowl and milk jug, the coffee pot and teapot, with ivory scroll handles each terminating in serpent tails and masks and with hinged domed cover with part-ivory finial, the sugar bowl and milk jug with serpent handles and gilt interiors, the bodies chased with anthemion and scroll decoration on a matted ground, each engraved with a coat-of-arms, marked on bases and covers
24e coffee pot 11in. (29.5cm.) high
gross 96ozs. (2,985gr.) (4)

拍品專文

The coffee pot and teapot, with scalloped and reed-wrapped 'tazza' rims, are embellished with palm-flowering tendrils and antiqued bas-relief tablets or plaques, celebrating the Element of Water and recalling the contest for Attica. The Triumphant Britannia (Athena), is born by a hippocamp, while Neptune, on the reverse side, controls the water and drives his hippocamp quadriga. The palm-wrapped ivory handle is held by the silver head and bifurcated tails of a sea-serpent.

The similarly decorated sugar bowl and milk jug display tablets with trumpeting tritons, celebrating the union of Neptune and Amphitrite, the former seated in his triumphal chariot, the latter borne by a dolphin. Its palm-flowered ornament and handles formed as serpents bearing an egg in their mouths, derive from ornaments for 'utensils' invented around 1800, by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1831) and published in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, London, 1807, pl. XLVII.