A PAIR OF GEORGE III SILVER-GILT WINE COASTERS

细节
A PAIR OF GEORGE III SILVER-GILT WINE COASTERS
LONDON, 1808, MAKER'S MARK OF J.W. STORY

Each of circular form, the sides of basketweave wirework applied with grapes, leaves and vines, the rim with an egg-and-dart border, the base with a leaf border, the center engraved with an Earl's armorials, the base mahogany, marked on bases--5 7/8in. (15cm.) diam. (2)

拍品专文

The arms are those of Bathurst, as borne by the Earls Bathurst, probably for Henry, 3rd Earl Bathhurst (1768-1834), who succeeded in 1794 and served as Secretary of War and Colonies from 1812-1827, and President of the Council from 1828-1830 under the administration of the Duke of Wellington.

Sir Egerton Brydges writes in his Biographical Peerage, "he seems too much to have indulged in a life of indolence, for his friends speak of him as a man of superior talents, of which, however, he has not given the world much opportunity to form a judgment. He is said to be sagacious and sarcastic: full of acute sense and cutting humor." The Complete Peerage reports that "he was the last man to wear a pigtail, and that in 1828 he cut it off, and sent it round in an official box to his ministerial colleagues."

An set of four identical wine coasters of the same date, by the same, was sold in these Rooms October 22, 1984 and is illustrated in Michael Clayton Christie's Pictorial History of English and American Silver, Oxford 1985, p.270, plate 5.