Lot Essay
The fluted white-enamelled Corinthian columns and their rectangular hollow-sided altar plinths have brass-enriched bases and are sprigged with blue cornflowers, sacred to Ceres.
Bilston, a town west of Birmingham, is where early experiments in the application of vitreous enamels to thin metal took place as early as 1719, under the direction of the metal japanners, Joseph Allen and Samuel Stone. Production grew and Bilston became the centre for domestic japanned iron and tinplate wares under John Hartill, Bickley and Sons, Hanson and Jacksons and Homer. These metal-workers and Matthew Boulton, played an important part in establishing this relatively new domestic industry. A design for a Corninthian column with hollow-sided altar plinth appears in a Boulton and Fothergill fused plate catalogue of 1779, no. '969443', at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (M. Snodin, 'Matthew Boulton's Sheffield Plate Catalogues', Apollo, September 1987, p. 8).
An enamel, Bilton, candlestick circa 1770, is illustrated in J. Bourne and V. Brett, Lighting in the Domestic Interior, London, 1991, fig. 261.
Bilston, a town west of Birmingham, is where early experiments in the application of vitreous enamels to thin metal took place as early as 1719, under the direction of the metal japanners, Joseph Allen and Samuel Stone. Production grew and Bilston became the centre for domestic japanned iron and tinplate wares under John Hartill, Bickley and Sons, Hanson and Jacksons and Homer. These metal-workers and Matthew Boulton, played an important part in establishing this relatively new domestic industry. A design for a Corninthian column with hollow-sided altar plinth appears in a Boulton and Fothergill fused plate catalogue of 1779, no. '969443', at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (M. Snodin, 'Matthew Boulton's Sheffield Plate Catalogues', Apollo, September 1987, p. 8).
An enamel, Bilton, candlestick circa 1770, is illustrated in J. Bourne and V. Brett, Lighting in the Domestic Interior, London, 1991, fig. 261.