Lot Essay
Sir Thomas J. Lipton presented this punchbowl and ladle to the Marquess of Breadalbane as a 25th-anniversary present. Thomas Lipton (1850-1931) expanded his father's small grocery in Glasgow into an international retail business which made him a millionaire by the age of thirty. Lipton's success was based on his innate genius for advertising, and his publicity schemes, such as dropping leaflets from hot-air balloons, attracted great attention from the press. Lipton cut costs by ordering his groceries directly from farmers, mostly in Ireland, and in 1889 he acquired his own tea plantations in Ceylon. In 1897, the year he commissioned this punchbowl, Lipton's fortune was well established and he launched his thirty-year interest in yacht-racing as well as his philanthropic career. For these efforts, Lipton was knighted in 1898. Lord Breadalbane had held a number of public offices by 1897, including Lord Steward of the Household, and was a director of several public companies, and it is likely that this punch bowl commemorated a successful business relationship as well as a silver anniversary.