The Russell Service: A Set of Four Regency Silver Sauce Tureens, Covers and Liners, Paul Storr, London, 1816

Sir Henry Russell, 1st Baronet, and thence by descent. 

Woolley & Wallis Salisbury, 28 April 2010, lot 1009

Sir Henry Russell (1751-1836) was born in Dover, the third son of Michael Russell (d. 1793), controller of the Naval Victualling Yard there. Educated at Charterhouse and Queen's College, Cambridge, he was appointed a Commissioner of Bankruptcy in 1775. His first wife died in childbirth and he remarried two years later, in 1782, Anne Whitworth; they had five sons and four daughters. He was appointed a Judge in the Indian Courts in 1797 and Chief Justice of Bengal in 1806. Created a Baronet in 1812, he retired from the Indian service in 1813 and died at 62 Wimpole Street, London in 1836.

These four sauce tureens are from of a set of eight, mentioned in the 'Estimate of plate on approbation for Sir Henry Russell Bart. P. Rundell Bridge and Rundell, December 20th 1815.' They cost £415 and 10s. The other four sauce tureens appear in the Christie's Bi-Centinery Review of the Year, October 1965 - July 1966, p. 125. They were from the collection of Neville Hamwee and fetched £3,300. The pair of matching soup tureens from the Russell service were sold from the collection of Fay Plohn at Sotheby's, New York, 16 July 1970, lot 133. Also from the Russell plate was a Storr silver-gilt centerpiece of 1815, formerly in the Hartman collection and sold Christie's, New York, 20 October 1999, lot 205, and a four-light candelabrum by Storr of 1815, sold Christie's, London, 18 May 1966, lot 33.

The "Rundell's Album" at the Victoria & Albert Museum has a design for this model of sauce tureen, attributed to Edward Hodges Baily, showing the fluted sides and oak leaf tops to the feet. It was a popular pattern with Rundell's clients in the 1810s, including the service for Harriet Coutts, later Duchess of St. Albans.