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‘The Fairy Summons,’ an early Victorian daydream
On July 21st, 2011 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
Henry Fitz-Cook’s design for ‘The Fairy Summons’
(The Art-Union, London, 1848, p. 218);
a silver-gilt table bell,
C.T. & G. Fox, London, 1871,
probably retailed by Lambert & Co
(Sotheby’s Belgravia, 10 July 1975, lot 225,
photo: courtesy Sotheby’s, London)
‘The Fairy Summons,’ a design for a hand bell by the artist Henry Fitz-Cook (1824?-1898), was first published in 1848 among a group of ‘Original Designs for Manufacturers’ in The Art-Union. The accompanying text explained that the boy whose figure forms the handle had been ‘startled by the noise of the petals against the leaves,’ a conceit which might happily be produced, it said, in a mixture of Parian and metal.
Although no such Parian and metal versions of ‘The Fairy Summons’ appear ever to have been made, the retail goldsmiths Martin, Baskett & Martin of Cheltenham took up the challenge. Their exhibit at the Great Exhibition of 1851 included a ‘Silver toilet bell-handle; design, ”Boy Stopping his ears,”’ to which a contemporary writing in The Crystal Palace and Its Contents (6 December 1851, p. 156) added his own interpretation: ‘Puck shouts lustily, calling the spirits of the air to do his mistress’s bidding.’
Shakespeare’s mischievous sprite was certainly in Fitz-Cook’s mind when he designed ‘The Day Dreamer’ easy chair for the Birmingham papier-mâché manufacturers, Jennens & Bettridge. Instead of shouting or stopping his ears, this Puck, forming part of the chair’s decoration, was discovered ‘lying asleep in a labyrinth of foliage.’
It is a pity that surviving examples of ‘The Fairy Summons’ bell are hard to find. A few from the 1870s and later are known, made by C.T. & G. Fox for the retailers, Lambert & Co of Coventry Street, London.
‘The Day Dreamer’ papier-mâché easy chair,
designed by Henry Fitz-Cook for Jennens & Bettridge,
shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851
(The Crystal Palace and Its Contents, London, 3 January 1852, p. 213)
Fitz-Cook, illustrator of William Cowper’s
The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1868),
was a sometime member of
the Society of Arts, London.
Storr & Mortimer’s New York City branch
On March 23rd, 2011 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
a silver coffee pot and tea kettle on lampstand,
shown by Hunt & Roskell,
successors to Mortimer & Hunt (late Storr & Mortimer)
at the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, New York City, 1853,
where the firm’s exhibit was under the superintendence of
Charles Mogridge, one of Paul Storr’s former apprentices
(B. Silliman jr and C.R. Goodrich, editors,
The World of Science, Art, and Industry Illustrated
from Examples in the New-York Exhibition, 1853-54,
New York, 1854, pp.127/8)
Garrard’s, Hunt & Roskell, Joseph Angell and the relative newcomer, Elkington, Mason & Co of Birmingham, were the only English manufacturing and retail silversmiths of note to have have been represented at the New York Exhibition of 1853. Their stands were furnished with many of the objects they had shown two years earlier at the Great Exhibition in London. Thus Angell’s silver group, ‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies‘ made its reappearance, as did Elkington’s silver electrotype race prize, ‘The Iliad Salver,’ another of which recently had been presented at a banquet by the working men of Birmingham to Charles Dickens.
It is not generally known, however, that of these important representatives of the English goldsmiths’ trade, only Hunt & Roskell had been in America before, albeit under its former name of Storr & Mortimer. This is a mysterious episode in the firm’s history. The senior partner, Paul Storr (1771-1844) had retired at the end of December 1838, when the remaining partners, John Mortimer (d.1871) and John Samuel Hunt (d.1865), continued trading as Mortimer & Hunt. During 1839 a branch establishment was opened under the old name of Storr & Mortimer at 20 Warren Street, New York City, which in the Spring of 1840 removed to 356 Broadway.
Unfortunately, the firm’s New York venture foundered and closed about the end of 1841. The cause is not precisely known but probably happened because of a muddle over United States’ import duty, which resulted in the partners being taken to court.
an advertisement for the New York City
branch of Storr & Mortimer
(Bentley’s Miscellany, New York, January 1841)
‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies’
On January 21st, 2010 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies,’ a silver group made in the workshops of Joseph Angell, London, about 1850, inspired by Joseph Addison‘s tale, which first appeared in The Spectator, 21 July 1711.
The much-loved character of Sir Roger would have been familiar to many, his exploits having been reprinted several times during the 18th and 19th Centuries. He also featured in Sir Roger de Coverley; or, The Merry Christmas, a dramatic entertainment produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1746; and in Sir Roger de Coverley; or, The Widow and Her Wooers, a drama at the Olympic Theatre in 1851. Furthermore, the artists Thomas Stothard (who sometime provided designs for silver to Rundell, Bridge & Rundell) and Charles Robert Leslie had both chosen ‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies’ as a subject for paintings, the latter winning praise for his at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1829.
(photo: unknown, circa 1853)
The production of so-called ‘narrative’ plate – pieces which ‘tell a story’ – was by no means confined to England, but it was in London during much of the 19th century that silversmiths produced some of the best examples. Scenes of bucolic peace or episodes from the myths of Antiquity had decorated silver cups, cream jugs and boxes and dishes for generations, but it was probably the appearance of Flaxman‘s ‘Shield of Achilles‘ in 1821, with its wide border of figures inspired by Homer’s Iliad, that began a fashion for finely wrought objects that were intended to elevate mere silver and silver-gilt into precious works of art.
Rundell’s, the firm responsible for the ‘Shield of Achilles,’ was inevitably involved in the manufacture of other such pieces, such as the ‘Crecy Shield’ (William Bateman, London, 1834), but it was in the hands of Garrard‘s and Storr & Mortimer/Hunt & Roskell’s designers and craftsmen that in the 1840s and 1850s the genre flourished. Both firms displayed magnificent examples at the Great Exhibition of 1851, most of which had been made as testimonials or race ‘cups,’ but a worthy, less celebrated entrant to this field was Joseph Angell. With his silver group, ‘Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies,’ made from models by John Henning junior, he had hit upon an old, familiar subject that with nostalgic warmth recalled the age before factories and speeding locomotives. As the Athenaeum remarked approvingly, ‘Mr. Angell could not have chosen a scene more thoroughly English than this.’
- Various items of interest are currently listed on myfamilysilver.com, including pieces from Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, William Bateman, Garrard’s, Paul Storr, Mortimer & Hunt and Hunt & Roskell
19th Century photography in the service of silver
On December 10th, 2009 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
a photograph of Hunt & Roskell’s display of silver race cups, candelabra, testimonials, wine coolers, &c,
at the International Exhibition of 1862, South Kensington, London;
a number of the pieces shown are known to have survived
Hunt & Roskell was the commercial successor to (Paul) Storr & Mortimer.
(photo: The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co Ltd, London, 1862)
Ask any commercial photographer and he will tell you that the most challenging objects he has to capture are those made of silver: they dazzle or vanish into black or white backgrounds. Probably the very first photograph ever taken of silver, a calotype by William Henry Fox Talbot made between 1844 and 1846, shows the problem to perfection: a pair 1750s candlesticks, an Elkington coffee pot, &c, are harsh combinations of darkness and brightness. Although the same disappointing results were achieved of silver by the photographers who recorded some exhibits at the Great Exhibition of 1851, there are plenty of photographs surviving from the second half of the 19th Century which prove just how useful a medium photography became to the silver and jewellery trades.
The archive of Edward Barnard & Sons, the London manufacturing silversmiths, includes an extraordinary photographic record (circa 1850-1940) of the firm’s work. An unknown number of photographs were sent by Victorian manufacturers and retained by the Patent Office in their registration of copyright designs. Photographs were taken at most exhibitions, large and small, many of the most successful being those made by The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co Ltd at the International Exhibition in 1862. Photography was even harnessed at that early period by manufacturers for illustrated trade catalogues, although such publications must have been expensive to produce.
Photography also became a pleasant way to record a gift of silver, sometimes with the recipient in evidence, for distribution to subscribers or for sale in local shops.
a page of die-stamped ‘Sterling Silver Novelties’ from the
CATALOG AND PRICE LIST OF DIAMOND, GOLD AND PLATED JEWELRY AND SILVER THINGS
published by Robert S. Gatter, maker, 19 Maiden Lane, New York City, 1900
(photo: unknown, 1900)
- Various items of interest are currently listed on myfamilysilver.com, including items made by the following silversmiths: Hunt & Roskell, Paul Storr, Elkington & Co and Edward Barnard & Sons
Silver- and gold-mounted whips for jockeys, brides’ trousseaux, &c, in rhinoceros hide, carved ivory, India-rubber . . .
On November 26th, 2009 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
a selection of gold and silver whip handles shown by Swaine & Adeney and Sangster,
both of London, at the Great Exhibition of 1851;
the design of the central example, by Swaine & Adeney,
was emblematic of the Exhibition, with figures representing the four quarters of the globe
(from The Illustrated Exhibitor, London, 6 December 1851, p. 510,
and The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue, London, 1851, p. 313)
A visitor to the Great Exhibition of 1851 thought few gentlemen there ‘and possibly few of the ladies’ could have failed to admire the handsome show of riding whips by English, French, Belgian, Spanish and American manufacturers. The best whips were, and always had been, silver- (or gold-) mounted and the different types, from strong whips for coachmen to those for children, were legion. So too were patterns: Mrs Barnard, a whipmaker of Fleet Street, was indignant when in 1766 some of the best of her stock was stolen, including one ‘mounted with treble Silver Engine turned buttons [and] a Diamond-buttoned Jockey, the Handle of each Silver stitched.’
While in 1821 a London jeweller, John Brogden, was prosecuted for thrashing another member of the trade with his whip, most were used for legitimate purposes and, unsurprisingly in that age of universal equine transport, were everywhere in evidence. Swaine & Adeney, whipmakers to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and probably the busiest of the London firms, was represented at many international exhibitions; ‘Blessed is the steed on whose fleet flanks such whips are ornamentally applied!’ thought one New Yorker when the firm showed there in 1853.
The more expensive whips were sometimes very elaborate, made from combinations of exotic materials including clarified rhinoceros hide and carved ivory. Chowrie riding whips with fly-whisk horse-hair plumes for use in India were a staple item, and in 1851 William Slark of Burlington Arcade sold flexible rubber whips mounted in turquoise-set gold.
two celebrated Victorian equestrian performers with whips: Louis Francisco, trainer and rider (circa 1862),
and Jenny Louise Hengler, noted as ‘a graceful exponent of haute Ä—cole riding‘ (circa 1872)
(photos: John Culme’s Footlight Notes Collection)
- Several items items of equestrian interest are currently featured on myfamilysilver.com.
John Culme, who for many years has been connected with Sotheby's Silver Department, is author of several books and articles, including The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, 1838-1914, published in 1987, and co-author with Nicholas Rayner of The Jewels of the Duchess of Windsor. He is also a Liveryman of the Goldsmiths' Company, London.
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