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Lot Essay
This dessert-stand, also called a tureen or coupe d'entremets, is after a design by Auguste Moreau and A.L.M. Cavelier for J.B.C. Odiot for the 'Madame Mére' service, Paris, 1806. A set of four silver-gilt dessert stands were made for Letizia Bonaparte, the mother of Napoleon, (illustrated in A. Phillips and J. Sloane, Antiquity Revisited: French and English Silver-Gilt from the Collection of Audrey Love, p.8-9), all now in Al-Tajir Collection.
The influence the best French designers had upon English silver at this date is demonstrated by the very similar dessert-stand by Paul Storr, London, 1808, sold Christie's London, 22 November 2000 lot 133, formerly from the John Pierpont Morgan Collection.
This lot is marked with unusual Paris marks. The cockerel standard mark for first standard silver is flanked by the letter A and numeral 1, also the excise mark of a man's head is between an 8 and 5 inverted and reversed. A similar combination of marks is found on a tea-urn by Odiot, dated 1789-1809 thought to have been part of the Borghese service (F. Dennis, Three Centuries of French Domestic Silver, New York, 1960, vol. I no. 265 and vol. II. p. 92). More recently it has been suggested that the A is actually a date letter for 1798 and the inverted 8 and 5 an engraver's error (C. Arminjon, J. Beaupuis and M. Bilimoff, Dictionnaire des poincons de fabricants d'ouvrages d'or et d'argent de Paris et de la Seine, 1798-1838, Paris, 1991, p.3)
The influence the best French designers had upon English silver at this date is demonstrated by the very similar dessert-stand by Paul Storr, London, 1808, sold Christie's London, 22 November 2000 lot 133, formerly from the John Pierpont Morgan Collection.
This lot is marked with unusual Paris marks. The cockerel standard mark for first standard silver is flanked by the letter A and numeral 1, also the excise mark of a man's head is between an 8 and 5 inverted and reversed. A similar combination of marks is found on a tea-urn by Odiot, dated 1789-1809 thought to have been part of the Borghese service (F. Dennis, Three Centuries of French Domestic Silver, New York, 1960, vol. I no. 265 and vol. II. p. 92). More recently it has been suggested that the A is actually a date letter for 1798 and the inverted 8 and 5 an engraver's error (C. Arminjon, J. Beaupuis and M. Bilimoff, Dictionnaire des poin