A GEORGE II SILVER SALVER

JOSEPH SYMPSON
The fine work of the engraver Joseph Sympson can be found on a number of pieces by Thomas Farren, such as a salver, also of 1733, engraved with the arms of Barrington, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its Baroque cartouche is identical to the present example, including the rustic figures and frolicking putti. Charles Oman attributed this cartouche to Sympson and illustrated it in his English Engraved Silver, London, 1978, fig. 103, p. 90. Two other examples of identical cartouches attributed to Sympson appear on a salver by Simon Pantin of 1730, sold Christie's, New York, 16 April 1999, lot 205, and another by Augustin Courtauld of 1732, sold Christie's, London, 10 July 1984, lot 333.

By the late 1730s Sympson was producing a variation of this cartouche, incorporating the same shepherd and shepherdess figures and the same putti scene, but in a more rococo style, as found on a salver by Robert Abercromby, 1737, sold Christie's, London, 18 December 1997, lot 146. Perhaps his most freely engraved work can ben seen on a silver-gilt tazza engraved with the arms of Richard Ingram, 5th Viscount Irwin of Temple Newsam and his wife Lady Anne Howard. It was made by Willilam Lukin in 1717 and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, C. Oman, op. cit., p, 110.