Museum accessions - George II dinner service on view at London's Somerset House - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, June, 2002 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

In an intriguing story of intertwining histories, 120 pieces from a magnificent dinner service ordered for George III have found their way to Britain. Some 80 examples will be on view at Somerset House in London until the end of this year. Acquired by the Rothschild Family Trusts, they will then be on indefinite loan to Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild between 1874 and 1889.

The service was ordered for George III's electoral palace in Hanover in northwestern Germany. The bulk was made by the French royal goldsmith Robert Joseph Auguste in the early 1780s (using some pieces from stock), and it was then extended by Frantz Peter Bunsen in Hanover, following the French models. Because of the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, the service had been shipped to London by the time Hanover was invaded in 1803, but it was returned after Napoleon's abdication in 1814. and again enlarged. When Hanover, which became a kingdom in 1814, was invaded by the Prussians later in the century the service was apparently buried to protect it. In 1924 it was sold, and half was acquired by Alphonse de Rothschild, Ferdinand's nephew. On his death, twenty-three pieces were bequeathed to the Musee du Louvre, and the remainder went to a private collector from whom the Rothschild Family Trusts have now obtained it.

Fittingly, the service will be displayed first at Somerset House, designed by George III's favorite architect, Sir William Chambers, where it will be joined by two wine coolers originally from the service and now in the Royal Collection, which will be on loan from Elizabeth II, George III's four times great granddaughter.

Margo Grant Walsh, a well-known New York City interior architect, began collecting arts and crafts silver in 1981 and since then has assembled an impressive collection of some 400 objects. Recently she donated 250 English and American examples to the Portland Art Museum, in Oregon, enriching and extending that institution's already fine holdings of silver (see pp. 92--99 of this issue).

Like many collectors of arts and crafts objects, Walsh was drawn by the beauty and originality of the hand-wrought silver The examples illustrated here were made in Birmingham, England, one of the most active centers of arts and crafts design. Its Guild of Handicraft was founded in 1890 with about twenty members, most of them metalworkers. By promoting handcraftsmanship, the guild aimed to improve the quality and design of silver wares being produced in Birmingham and to increase the skill level of its makers.

To the same end, and in the same year; the School for Jewelers and Silversmiths opened on Vittoria Street in Birmingham. Robert Catterson Smith, a close associate of William Morris, was its headmaster from 1901 to 1903. Liberty and Company was based in Birmingham, as was the celebrated designer Albert Edward Jones. Jones opened his business in 1902 and continued to work into the 1930s, making civic, domestic, and church silver. After his death in 1954, the firm continued under his wife and later his son, and it remains in business today. The compote by Jones illustrated here is beautifully designed and executed, masterfully combining historical antecedents of technique and style in a form whose simple lines presage the modernism of the twentieth century.