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Lot Essay
Hilary Young in The Silver Society Journal, Autumn 1996, no. 8, p. 484, Philip Cornman: a biographical note, points out that there is a possibility that the architect John Pater Gandy may have designed this inkstand.
The Memoranda of the Society of Dilettanti record that on 14 March 1814 'the two Draughtsmen of the Society, Mr Gandy & Bedford' were to be paid £25 each 'that they shall lay out the same in the purchase each of them of a piece of Plate according to their own wishes...'. However, again as Young points out, this inkstand seems to derive from elements taken from cisterns illustrated by C. H. Tatham in Ancient Architectural Ornament (plates 92 and 93) to which we know either Philip, or his son Henry, Cornman subscribed in 1803.
Philip Cornman was first recorded in 1768 as an apprentice to a smallworker in gold, and subsequently as a printer and engraver, a print seller, a dealer of drawings and paintings, a wax modeler, a silversmith, a jeweller and a worker in gilt brass. His mark, first registered as a smallworker in 1793, is rare, appearing only on four centerpieces (one sold in Christie's, London, 12 June 2006, lot 89), a pair of compotes (Sotheby's, London, 23 February 1967, lot 150), two Warwick vases (for one see Christie's, London, 12 June 2006, lot 90), and on a magnificent eight-piece Royal communion service of 1802 and 1803 for the Metropolitan Church at Quebec.
Cornman eventually specialised in the manufacture of large architectural plate, based on the Greco-Roman designs of Charles Heathcote Tatham to whose Design for Ornamental Plate, he subscribed. Arthur Grimwade in 'New Light on Canadian Treasure' Country Life, 31 January 1985, pp. 268-273 writes that he 'progressed from modest beginnings to considerable status to be commissioned by Rundell and Bridge....It seems strange that...so little silver bearing the mark has survived. It is possible, of course, that they [Cornman and Son] continued to work for Rundell, Bridge and Rundell under John Bridge's mark and that this is the explanation of the additional name of Bridges in the directories from 1820, which might suggest that the royal firm had a financial stake in the Cornman business. Whatever the relationship between Cornman and Rundell's, we can point to a plateworker of hitherto unsuspected accomplishment'.