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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)
Maharajah Duleep Singh’s magnificent silver centrepiece
On February 20th, 2011 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
the large (now presumed lost) silver centrepiece made by
R. & S. Garrard & Co
for Maharajah Duleep Singh’s dining table,
shown at the International Exhibition of 1862.
‘It has been designed to record an interesting
incident in the history of his Highness’ father…
The Maharajah, riding on an elephant, is in the act
of rising from his hondah to receive from his
Turcoman attendant a horse, the possession
of which he has coveted.’
(The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue of the
International Exhibition, London, 1862, p. 66)
‘Those eyes and those teeth are too beautiful,’ gushed Queen Victoria after meeting Duleep Singh (1838-1893), last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire. He had ascended the throne at 5, his father, Maharajah Ranjit Singh having died in 1839. Their Punjab territory was annexed to the British along with personal property, including the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond which, as a spoil of war, was handed to the Queen in 1850. The following year it was shown at the Great Exhibition but failed to impress because of its unsophisticated rose cut. In 1852 the stone was entrusted to the royal jewellers R. & S. Garrard & Co to supervise a re-cutting, emerging as a much smaller but infinitely more brilliant gem. It now forms part of the British Crown Jewels.
Although very young when he first visited London, the splendid, free-spending Duleep Singh soon became well known to the capital’s goldsmiths. In 1863 he commissioned London & Ryder to make a gold and rock crystal bouquet-holder with diamonds, emerald and rubies as a wedding present for Princess Alexandra of Denmark upon her marriage to the future King Edward VII. Two or three years previously he had ordered from Garrard’s a huge dining table centrepiece in silver weighing 2,000 ounces, the principal feature of which was the figure of a ceremonial elephant. This astonishing piece was shown by the firm at the International Exhibition of 1862 but was overshadowed on their stand by Queen Victoria’s much-noticed Alhambresque fountain with models of her favourite horses.
Dee’s of Sherwood Street, Soho; silversmiths, mounters, jewellers, &c
On September 23rd, 2010 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
a Victorian silver bottle ticket, maker’s mark of Henry William Dee
for H.W. & L. Dee, London, 1869/70;
a copyright design, registered in London by Dee’s on 24 February 1870
(photo: the late Michael Parkington)
When Louis Dee died of ‘English cholera’ at his house in Hammersmith Grove at the relatively early age of 53 in August 1884, the London goldsmiths’ trade lost one of its most active members. Although generally described as a manufacturing silversmith and jeweller, his firm was also known as wholesalers of all kinds of luxury goods, including clocks and watches. It had been established in the late 1820s by his father, Thomas William Dee (c.1792-1869) and run in partnership for many years with his brother, Henry William Dee (c.1823-1896).
For anyone familiar with Dee’s surviving silver and silver-mounted pieces, the excellent quality of their designs and workmanship will come as no surprise. The enamelled silver-gilt mounted sword the firm completed for the retail goldsmiths, Widdowson & Veale in 1860 for presentation to Sir James Outram by the Common Council of London is a splendid example. It is currently on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
On a less ambitious scale Dee’s have long attracted the attention of collectors of unusual silver novelties of the type they regularly made for Garrard’s, Leuchars & Son and Asprey’s and other retail goldsmiths. The patterns for many were registered as copyright and the designs, which survive in the UK National Archives, make a fascinating study. Among them is a drawing for the ‘GIN’ silver bottle ticket illustrated here.
On 19 May 1885 Foster’s of Pall Mall auctioned Dee’s remaining stock, recalling that Louis Dee’s ‘reputation as a manufacturing silversmith was second to none.’
Examples of silver from Garrard’s are currently posted on myfamilysilver.com.
Mark Twain and the Ascot Gold Cup of 1907
On May 20th, 2010 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
R. & S. Garrard & Co’s burnishers at work on the replacement Ascot Gold Cup of 1907,
which was delivered in August that year, about two months after the original had been stolen on 18 June
(photo from The Sphere, London, 20 July 1907)
Mark Twain, the American humorist and author of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, awoke one morning in June 1907 on the first day of a visit to England to find newspaper headlines proclaiming, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES – ASCOT GOLD CUP STOLEN. His waggish British friends took note.
The sensational theft the day before of the 500 sovereign cup was all the more embarrassing because it had vanished from under the noses of guards at the famous English horse race grandstand, one of whom was from Garrard’s, the Crown Jewellers, who had made the trophy. Besides, the cup had been paid for by King Edward VII and should have been the focus of all eyes on Gold Cup day, the most important of the racing calendar. It was never seen again.
The cup, 13 ¼ in high, comprised 68 ounces of 20 carat gold. Its design was in the style of similar early 19th Century racing trophies, Garrard’s craftsmen working from new drawings and a life-size model provided by their artist colleagues.
Enter Mr Twain. Shortly afterwards as guest of honour at a Savage Club dinner he was handed a parcel. It contained a copy of the stolen trophy in gilt plaster, with an incriminating note from a ‘partner’ who was supposed to have purloined the cup on the author’s behalf. The laughter subsiding, the replica was found to be exact in every detail except for the acorn top which had been replaced by a well-modelled bust of Huckleberry Finn’s creator.
artists at R. & S. Garrard & Co, working on the design and the model
for the Ascot Gold Cup of 1907
(photo: The Sphere, London, 20 July 1907)
A selection of items made by Garrard’s and its predecessors will be found on myfamilysilver.com, for which see:
George Wickes
Wakelin & Tayler
Garrard’s
‘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
Take seven humming birds . . .
On August 27th, 2009 John Culme wrote on the subject of Uncategorized.
Harry Emanuel’s new premises, Brook Street, Hanover Square, London (The Illustrated London News, London, Saturday, 17 November 1860, p. 455); although somewhat altered, No. 2 Brook Street still stands and is presently the headquarters of the United National Bank
The humming bird necklace I mentioned last week was devised by Harry Emanuel, one of the most remarkable figures of the London silver and jewellery trade. He caused a sensation at the 1867 Paris Exhibition by his display of the silver mechanical swan which so delighted Mark Twain and which still thrills visitors today to the Bowes Museum, County Durham.
Emanuel was not 25 when in 1855 he took over the family business. Although it was already successful he determined that it should rival the leading firms of Garrard’s, Hunt & Roskell and Hancock’s. Few were surprised when in 1860 he opened new premises in Brook Street, Mayfair, decorated in the Elizabethan style, its ebony cabinets filled with every conceivable type of wrought gold, silver, jewellery, object of vertu and enamels. The focus of the showroom was an ornamental stove like a gigantic flower vase brimming with hot-house plants. For a man who sold humming bird necklaces and persuaded the Sultan of Turkey to purchase a jewelled gold-mounted ivory stereoscope, nothing was too exotic.
Harry Emanuel himself was an exotic. His fortune made, partly from South African diamonds, he sold his business. In 1874 he purchased a Portuguese title, that of the Baron de Almeda, and removed to Paris with his wife where they lived in great luxury. In 1880 he agreed to represent the impoverished San Dominican state as Minister Plenipotentiary to France, which of course opened many doors, social and political. He died at Nice in 1898.
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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