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拍品專文
The family had lived at Court of Hill from the 16th century, although the house was later rebuilt in the Jacobean period with brick facades and stone dressings, dated 1683. Later embellisments include a classical garden pavilion with Tuscan columns, perhaps commissioned by Thomas Hill. The only son of Thomas and Martha Hill, he was a member of the Middle Temple and was M.P. for Leominster from 1774 until his death in August 1776. He inherited Court of Hill whilst still a minor, his father having died in 1724. He later married Lucy, daughter of Francis Roche Esq., of Whitton in 1757. They had two daughters and on Thomas Hill's death they became his co-heirs. The elder, Lucy (1761-1855), who married Thomas Humphrey Lowe (d.1797) of Bromsgrove, co. Worcester in 1780, succeeded to the estates. The second daughter, Anna Maria (1767-1812), who married Theophilus Salway (d.1837), of The Lodge, Ludlow, in 1787, inherited many of the chattels, including this salver and a cup and cover, by Paul de Lamerie, 1739, sold by a descendant at Sotheby's London, 20 June 1988, lot 161.
A contemporary description of Court of Hill by a cousin, Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys, published in 1771, describes the family's manner of living as,
'...always in the superb style of ancient hospitality, only their winters are spent in London. You see generosity blended with every elegance of fashionable taste; but they have a vast fortune and only two children, both girls...'
The 'elegance of fashionable taste' is evident in the design for the salver and the cup and cover which once accompanied it. This salver and a small group of similar salvers in differing sizes, from the early 1740s, are precursors of a form which was to become popular in the 1750s and the 1760s. A. G. Grimwade notes in Rococo Silver, London, 1974, p. 39, that these examples with openwork borders predate the more commonly found salvers of the 1750s and 1760s, when the high Rococo forms were superceeded by less sculptural openwork chinoiserie designs. T. Schroder in his exhibiton catalogue entry for this salver describes the borders as 'among de Lamerie's most liberated rococo creations'. A similar salver from the collection of Lord Hillingdon, was illustrated by P. A. S. Phillips in Paul de Lamerie, Citizen and Goldsmith of London, London, 1935, pl. CXXXVIII. Another is illustrated in J. R. Bliss, The Jerome and Rita Gans Collection of English Silver, on loan to The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, New York, 1992, no. 19 and a third in is the Al Tajir Collection and was exhibited Christie's, London The Glory of The Goldsmith, 1989, no. 80.
A contemporary description of Court of Hill by a cousin, Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys, published in 1771, describes the family's manner of living as,
'...always in the superb style of ancient hospitality, only their winters are spent in London. You see generosity blended with every elegance of fashionable taste; but they have a vast fortune and only two children, both girls...'
The 'elegance of fashionable taste' is evident in the design for the salver and the cup and cover which once accompanied it. This salver and a small group of similar salvers in differing sizes, from the early 1740s, are precursors of a form which was to become popular in the 1750s and the 1760s. A. G. Grimwade notes in Rococo Silver, London, 1974, p. 39, that these examples with openwork borders predate the more commonly found salvers of the 1750s and 1760s, when the high Rococo forms were superceeded by less sculptural openwork chinoiserie designs. T. Schroder in his exhibiton catalogue entry for this salver describes the borders as 'among de Lamerie's most liberated rococo creations'. A similar salver from the collection of Lord Hillingdon, was illustrated by P. A. S. Phillips in Paul de Lamerie, Citizen and Goldsmith of London, London, 1935, pl. CXXXVIII. Another is illustrated in J. R. Bliss, The Jerome and Rita Gans Collection of English Silver, on loan to The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, New York, 1992, no. 19 and a third in is the Al Tajir Collection and was exhibited Christie's, London The Glory of The Goldsmith, 1989, no. 80.