MARK OF SEBASTIAN AND JAMES CRESPELL, LONDON, 1772

Details

A SET OF FOUR GEORGE III SILVER SAUCE-TUREENS, COVERS AND STANDS
MARK OF SEBASTIAN AND JAMES CRESPELL, LONDON, 1772
Each oval, on conforming pedestal foot and with two scroll handles, with beaded and foliate borders, the sides applied with laurel garlands and paterae, the detachable rising domed cover with acanthus bud finial, the detachable stand with central hollow, two scroll handles and beaded borders, the covers each engraved with a coat-of-arms, each marked on foot-rim, cover and stand, each piece also engraved with numbers 1, 2, 3 or 4, the stands engraved with scratchweights respectively '35=6', '35=1', '36=7', ''35=2'
9¾ in. (24.5 cm.) long
136 oz. (4,232 gr.)
The arms are those of Clavering quartering another with Douglas in pretence, for Sir Thomas Clavering (1719-1794) 7th Bt., L.L.D., of Axwell Park and Greencroft, co. Durham, and his wife Martha (d.1792), daughter and presumably heiress of Joshua Douglas of Newcastle. Sir Thomas was educated at Christ Church College Oxford and matriculated in 1732. He succeeded to the family estate and baronetcy on the death of his father in 1746. He was M.P. for St. Maws from 1753-1754 and then for Shaftesbury from 1754-1760. He was later elected as M.P. for Durham in 1768, a seat he held until 1790. He employed the architect James Paine to build a Palladian house on his estate in co. Durham. Paine complained much at the time about Clavering's interference in the design. The house was later remodelled by Dobson in the early 19th century. Clavering died childless in 1794 whereupon the estates and title passed to his nephew.
(4)

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

The sauce-boats, designed in the antique/gôut Grec fashion promoted by George IIIs Rome-trained architect Sir William Chambers (d. 1792), evoke the feast of Venus as celebrated by lyric poets. Combining elements of the Roman plinth-supported sacred urn and the bacchic wine-krater vase, their oval bowls display Apollo's triumphal sunflowered medallions enwreathed in poetic laurel baguettes, that festoon from Ionic-scrolled handles. In addition strings of Venus pearls wreath the hollowed plinths of the domed lids, whose baccchic thyrsus-finials issue from palm-flowers; while more pearls crown the bowls, as well as their hollowed and scroll-handled trays. Their pattern, drawn in lighter vein, evolved from that of silver plate designed in the late 1760s for George Spencer, fourth Duke of Marlborough by Chambers, who boasted his connoisseurship in the design of such furniture. The Marlborough plate, commissioned through Messrs Parker & Wakelin, was executed by the partnership of Sebastian and James Crespel, and James Ansill and Stephen Gilbert (J. Harris and M. Snodin, Sir William Chambers, London, 1997, pp.152-153).

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