ROYAL silver plate

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 95, 16 January 1935, Page 6

ROYAL silver plate

Buckingham Palace Collection SOME UNIQUE PIECES The beautiful plate displayed at the Royal banquets and ceremonies recently serves to remind us of the vicis- ' situd'es of the collections of plate of _ the Royal Courts of Europe (writes f’ correspondent, of “The Observer.”) Great collections were formed at the expenditure of vast sums, and with the "■cuius and skill of forgotten master o-oldsmitlis. only to Ire melted in a geu-’ eration or two to satisfy the demand for ready money. Sometliing of the grandeur of the "■old and silver plate and ornaments of Henry VII. and Heurv VIII., unequalled in their time, may be gathered from the comments of ambassadors and foreign travellers, but more especially from” contemporary aud later inventories. Not one of the golden vesseis designed by Hans xloibeiu the young er for Henfy VIII. escaped conversion into coin during the Civil War, and onlv his original designs—one at Oxford aud the other in the British Museum—for a gold cup for Queen Jane Seymour serve to remind the present generation of the splendid work in this branch of art executed by that great artist. , Nor Ims any of the gold and silver plate acquired bv Charles I. survived. The first of the Hanoverian line to show any injirked interest in would seem to have been George IV. when Prince of Wales, who surrounded himself at Carlton House with costly plate and other objects of art of the highest value and of supreme importance. He it was who bought the noble'Rembrandts, now the glory of Buckingham Palace, and the Baring ' collection of Dutch pictures which laid the foundation of the great collection of Dutch pictures in the same palace. The earliest pieces in the Royal collection are an Elizabethan rose-water basin of 1595-6 and a Jacobean ewer of . 1617-8, bought by the Prince Regent in 1816 from the Court goldsmiths, Rundell. Bridge, and Rundell, for the sum of £94/10/-, a price which may be compared with £4050 for a pair of similar vessels sold at auction and since added to the collection of the late Mr. J. Pler- ; pent Morgan. ■ Presents To Moscow.

Although these are the only vessels of these reigns at Buckingham Palace, there are Queen Elizabeth s great salt of 1572-3 in the Tower of London, and two flagons of 1583-4 aud 1613-4 in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. The poverty of Elizabethan, Jacobean, _ and Stuart plate in the Royal collection is in striking contrast to the splendid, aud, in some cases, unique, pieces of English plate of those three periods preserved in the Kremllu at Moscow, part of the costly gifts from sovereigns of England to the Tsars and Court of Russia. . , Of the beautiful vessels of gold and silver added to the collection at enormous expense by Charles 11., but. little remains except a large dish, similar to a set of four (originally six) sent by him to the Tsar Alexis of Russia, another' dish of a different character, .1672-3; and some richly decorated sconces. Nor have any of his extravagant gifts of plate to his mistresses been preserved, notably the silver bedstead, wrought in 1674 at a cost equal to about £4500 iu the money of to-day, by John Cooqus, who, nevertheless, died in poverty near St. James’s Palace. In deploring the scarcity of Charles 11. plate in the Royal collection, the eleven noble salts and other objects in the Tower of London made for the Coronation of the King in 1660, and several regal vessels of his reign iu the Chapels Royal, as well as the silver table and mirror at Windsor Castle presented to him by the City of London, must not be forgotten. A Careless Servant. Unfortunately, a good deal of precious plate has been lost from the collection, thanks to the forgetfulness or neglect of the household staff of one of the Georges, who left it behind after a visit to Hanover. It comprised a solid gold salver of 1691-2 by one of tho most accomplished of the French Huguenot refugees in London, Pierre Harache the elder, and other plate by another Huguenot, David Willaume, Nicholas Clausen, and other AngloFrench goldsmiths, all inherited by the Duke of Cumberland, hereditary King of Hanover.

Remembering the encouragement given to the Huguenots in England and their descendants by William 111, Queen Anne and George I, the scarcity of plate by these exiles in the Royal collection may seem incredible, but is explained by the above-mentioned losses in Hanover. There now remain only 20 pieces by Anglo-French goldsmiths, including 12 by Nicholas Sprimont, who was not only a worker in precious metals but also a potter as proprietor of the celebrated Chelsea factory. The others are by Augustine Courtauld, Samuel Margas, Nicholas Clausen and Simon le Sage, whose names proclaim thqir French antecedents. If earlier plate is not richly represented there is a magnificent and unmatched display of great vessels and ornaments of later Georgian times, all heavily gilt and rendered all the more impressively regal by electric light. It comprises great candelabra, table centrepieces, cups, and other vessels, mostly made or rather supplied by the Court goldsmiths, Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, from whom the Prince of Wales ordered plate to the value of £70,000.

Much of it was executed in 1806, in the prevailing classical taste, by Paul Storr, the most accomplished goldsmith of the late Georgian period, from tlic designs of the sculptor, John Flaxman, R.A., who was employed by Rundells and who designed the famous “Shield of Achilles” at Buckingham Palace. A great dish was wrought in Storr’s workshop from designs by Thomas Stothard. R.A. A third artist in the employ of Rundells as a designer was William TheeJ, the sculptor, who complained of the intrusion of this firm on his taste in design. None of his designs can, however, be identified in the Royal plate. References are not infrequently made in newspapers to the magnificent “gold plate” at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace on State occasions. Rut all the impressive plate displayed during the past week is actually of silver-gilt, with the exception of three pieces of gold: a salver, a tray, and a cup. all dating from George IV.