拍品專文
This very rare bowl, called 'probably unique' by Hervouet, depicts the hospital's new building in Whitechapel designed by Boulton Mainwaring and begun in 1752. Founded in 1740 - one of five major private charity hospitals to arise in a uniquely English effort in the 18th century - London Hospital was intended to serve the sick and injured poor of the East End, particularly factory workers, seamen and their families. George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield and son of Thomas Parker, Lord High Chancellor, headed the committee overseeing the building project. The Earl's second wife had a Chinese armorial dinner service; the Earl's sister, Elizabeth, married Sir William Heathcote in 1720, when they ordered the well-known Heathcote-Parker dinner service. It seems likely that either one of these family members or another aristocratic patron of the hospital ordered this magnificent bowl.