A GEORGE II SILVER TEA CADDY

The chased scenes are based on Mannerist engravings by Bernard Picart. A silver-gilt example of 1747 (originally one of a pair) belongs to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, London and is illustrated in Susan Hare, ed., Paul de Lamerie: The Work of England's Master Silversmith, cat. no. 102, p. 155, previously sold from the Dunn Gardner Collection, Christie's, London, 29 April, 1902, lot 123.

This tea caddy originally formed part of a set of which the slightly larger central sugar box is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (25.15.55, bequest of Reverend Alfred Duane Pell) and the second caddy is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (1925-94-1a,b), the gift of Mrs. Alfred Duane Pell in 1925. Both the sugar box and the caddies are scratched underneath with a 19th or early 20th century dealer's stock number and price '3104 dxx/d/h (3)'. Additionally, the Metropolitan Museum's sugar box is engraved with a scratch weight '48=6 Sett'. Interestingly, however, the sugar box is chased by a different hand using different chasing tools. This suggests that there was more than one highly skilled chaser specialising in this type of Chinoiserie caddy who supplied members of the de Lamerie group. On the sugar box, the exotically dressed figure is similarly gathering sugar cane but is enclosed by grotesque masks emerging from more stylised rocaille.