DIGBY SCOTT & BENJAMIN SMITH The Foley Wine Coolers London, 1805 The crest is that of Foley for Thomas Foley 3rd Baron Foley of Kidderminster (1780-1833). Height: 11.5in (29.2cm) Total weight: 431oz (13,404g)
This pair of wine coolers is a rare example in silver gilt of the Egyptian inspired style that was very popular in Europe at the beginning of the 19thcentury as a result of archaeological discoveries and territorial conquests in Italy and the Nile such as Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, later popularised by publications such as Vivant Denon’s Voyages dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte of 1802 and its English translations, Travels in Egypt, 1803.
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The design for these coolers can be attributed to French born Jean-Jacques Boileau, a mural painter, who came to England to assist the architect Henry Holland in the decoration of the Prince of Wales’s Carlton House. Boileau’s drawing for a wine cooler in the Egyptian manner, which features identical sphinx supports and similar serpent handles, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is clearly the inspiration for this object. The design forms part of a portfolio of drawings used by Rundell Bridge & Rundell from which many of the firm’s designs were based, see T. Schroder, The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, 1998, pp. 337-341, no 89-90. Thomas 3 rd Baron Foley (1780-1833), almost certainly commissioned these wine coolers as either part of John Nash’s major reconstruction of Witley Court, Worcestershire or to celebrate his marriage on 18 th August 1806, Celia Olivia (d.1863), daughter of Robert William Fitzgerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster. Then by descent to his son Thomas Henry, 4th Baron Foley, (1808-1869), who in 1837 sold Witley Court to William Ward, 11th Baron Ward and later 1st Earl of Dudley, and then by descent to their son Henry Thomas, 5th Baron Foley, (18501905) who acquired in 1872, Ruxley Lodge in Claygate, Surrey, and then by descent to his brother Fitzalan Charles John, 6th Baron Foley (1852-1918) and then by descent to Gerald Henry, 7th Baron Foley, (1898-1927)Gerald Henry, Baron Foley; Castiglione and Scott, Ruxley Lodge, Claygate Surrey 14th-20th October 1919, lots 1333-1336.
30
| KOOPMAN RARE ART
KOOPMAN RARE ART
|
31