English silver baskets

Magazine Antiques, June, 2000 by Peter Kaellgren

Thanks to the Robertsons and many other generous donors over the years, the Royal Ontario Museum is well equipped to present nearly the entire history of English silver baskets by means of its collection. [15]

An exhibition entitled Silver--The Sterling Choice: Silver from the Norman and Marian Robertson Collection is on view at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto until the autumn.

PETER KAELLGREN is a curator of decorative arts in the department of Western art and culture at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

(1.) Michael Clayton, The Collector's Dictionary of the Silver and Gold of Great Britain and North America. 2nd ed. (Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1985), pp. 24-28 and Pls. I, II.

(2.) English Silver: A Catalogue to an Exhibition of Seven Centuries of English Domestic Silver (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1958), Fig. 15 and p. 16, No. B21. A very similar example of 1597 is illustrated in Clayton, Collector's Dictionary, p. 24, Fig. 8.

(3.) A large rectangular English silver basket of c. 1670, which was used for a baby's layette, is discussed and illustrated in Timothy B. Schroder, The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988), pp. 112-115 and No.25.

(4.) Clayton, Collector's Dictionary, p. 25. It is possible that period depictions of straw or wicker sewing baskets used in England may suggest the size of silver baskets similarly used.

(5.) I saw these baskets in several antiques shops in the Netherlands in 1991, where they were described as being for wool.

(6.) See Jules Guiffrey, Inventaire G[acute{e}n][acute{e}]al du mobilier de la couronne sous Louis XIV (1663-1715)...(Paris, 1885-1886).

(7.) The flies are reminiscent of those on the goat and bee jugs produced at the Chelsea Porcelain Factory in the late 1740s, which themselves copied a silver model. An example of one of these jugs is illustrated and their origin discussed in Elizabeth Adams, Chelsea Porcelain (Barrie and Jenkins London, 1987), Pls. 17 and 18.

(8.) Arthur E. Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837: Their Marks and Lives (Faber and Faber, London, 1990), p.567.

(9.) lbid, p. 701; John D. Davis, English Silver at Williamsburg (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, and University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1976), No. 122; and G. Bernard Hughes, "Pierced Silver Table Baskets," Country Life, vol. 108, no. 1808 (November 10, 1950), Pp. 1603, 1605. 1606.

(11.) Clayton, Collector's dictionary, p. 25; and Hughes, "Pierced Silver Table Baskets," pp. 1605-1606.

(10.) P. 196.

(12.) Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 54. no. 6 (June 1784), p. 478, notes, "In Chancery-lane, aged 76, Tho. Cowper. esq, many years clerk of the rules in the court of K[ing's] B[ench]."

(13.) Cowper's will specifies, "To my worthy good neighbours Francis Raymond Esquire and Thomas Wolfe Esquire of Saffron Walden for their kind and friendly civilities [illegible) I give the sum of twenty Guineas each for a Ring in remembrance of me" (will of Thomas Cowper, PROB 1111119, Quire 275, p. 7. Public Record Office, London).