FROM THE BEAUFORT TOILET SET: A fine pair of caskets, pair of flasks and pair of jars, John White, London, 1729, engraving attributed to Charles Gardner

comprising:
pair of rectangular caskets with step moulded bases and covers on scroll supports, the covers finely engraved with the Beaufort armorials within a band of interlaced strapwork incorporating flowerheads and husks, grinning female and male bearded mask and leaf-wrapped shells in the corners, the hinges further engraved with shells flanked by acanthus leaf scrolls, scratch weights 69=15 and 71=19,
pair of flasks, octagonal baluster, engraved with Beaufort armorials and portcullis crest, the top engraved around the moulding with panels of symmetrical leaf scrolls and flowerheads, screw-off cover engraved with stiff leaf band, scratch weights 13=13 and 13=11
pair of jars, octagonal bulbous, engraved with the Beaufort armorials and similarly decorated around the top and hinged covers, scratch weights 13=16 and 14=0

Henry, 3^rd Duke of Beaufort (1707-45), original order detailed below
Charles 4^th Duke of Beaufort (1709-56), who married Elizabeth, daughter of John Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, Gloucestershire, 1740
Retained by the 5^th Duke (1744-1803) from an auction of estate property in 1756
Hence by descent to Henry, 8^th Duke of Beaufort, his sale Christie’s, London, 13^th June 1895, lot 69, £269 8s to C. Davis
Sir Walter Farquhar Bt, who married Mary Octavia, daughter of Henry, 6^th Duke of Beaufort; thence by descent to Granville Farquhar, sold Christie’s, London, 19^th March 1930, part of lot 29
J .Rochelle Thomas
Crichton Brothers, exhibited at the Grosvenor House Antique Fair, 1938
One casket, pair of flasks and pair of jars sold Charles E. Dunlap, Sotheby's Parke-Bernet, New York, 13^th April 1963, lot 70
Armitage, Berkeley Square, London, exhibited at the Grosvenor House Antique Fair, 1990
Anonymous owner, Christie’s, London, 17^th March 1999, lot 110
S. J. Phillips Ltd
Partridge Fine Art

Other casket (71=19) after 1938:
Ronald Lee 1966, Apollo Advertisement, February 1966
Christie’s, London, 26^th June 1974, lot 114, £7,500, Spink
Christie’s, Geneva, 27^th June 1976, lot 239, 33,000sf
Rosemary Kanzler, London
Partridge Fine Art

References to the set:
A.J.H. Sale, ‘Records of the plate of the Beaufort family in the Badminton Archives and elsewhere’, The Silver Society Journal, no 7, Autumn 1995, p381-391
A.J.H. Sale and Vanessa Brett, ‘John White: some recent research’, The Silver Society Journal, no 8, Autumn 1996, p465-72
J.D. Davis, English Silver at Williamsburg, 1979, p242-44, cat no 273
Edward Wenham, Domestic Silver of Great Britain and Ireland, 1931, pl LXIX
Edward Wenham, ‘Silver Toilet Services’, Antique Collector, no19, May-June 1948, p195, figure 5
Grosvenor House Antiques Fair Handbook, 1990, p58
‘For the Connoisseur: English Silver’, Country Life 67, March 1930, p366
‘In the Saleroom: Silver’, Connoisseur, May 1930, p338
Silver at Partridge, 2000, no 11 (one casket)

Footnotes:
¹The Badminton Cabinet, sold Christie's, London, 5th July 1990. A gold box set with gouache miniature with the Beaufort armorials, which belonged to the 2nd or 3rd Duke of Beaufort was sold Christie's, London, 22nd November 1999, lot 19.
²A J H Sale, 1995, no 7, p385; A J H Sale and E Thompson, 1997, 'The Duke of Beaufort's surtout by  Thomas Germain', The Silver Society Journal, Autumn 1997, no 9, p544-551
³Sale and Brett, 1996
⁴J D Davis, p242-244
⁵Charles Oman, Engilsh Engraved Silver 1150-1900, 1978, p98
⁶Philippa Glanville, Silver in England, 1987, p216
⁷Sotheby's, London, 8th June 1995, lot 122
⁸ Christopher Hartop, The Huguenot Legacy: English Silver 1680-1760 from the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection, 1996, p280-1
⁹ John Bodman Carrington and George Ravensworth Hughes, The Plate of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, 1926, p91, plate 58
¹⁰Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1830, 1976
¹¹Peter Kaellgren, 'French influence in a toilet service by David Willaume', Silver Society Journal, Autumn 1993, vol 4, p162-172
¹² James Rothwell, 'A plethora of plates': The re-assembly of the Warrington Silver at Dunham Massey, Cheshire, Apollo, April 2001

The arms are those of France quartering England impaling Berkeley, for Charles, 4^th Duke of Beaufort (1709-56) and his wife Elizabeth (d1799), daughter of John Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, Glocestershire, whom he married in 1740.

The 3^rd and 4^th Dukes of Beaufort
The first owner of the toilet set, 3^rd Duke of Beaufort (1707-45), succeeded his father in 1714. In 1725 he set off on the Grand Tour, travelling to Paris, Florence, Naples, Venice and Rome in order to absorb the great antique past and the latest contemporary fashions (figure 1). The duke's aspiration to the princely magnificence of the Medici was exemplified by his purchase of the magnificent Badminton cabinet from the grand ducal workshops in Florence¹. Like other contemporary aristocrats, for example, the 4th Earl of Dysart, Duke of Berkeley and 2nd Duke of Kingston, he also returned from his tour with a refined taste for French and English silver. For example, at the same time as ordering this toilet set, he commissioned from the pre-eminent Parisian Royal goldsmith Thomas Germain, a magnificent surtout, weighing over 800oz, which was delivered in 1729². With the advice of Francis Smith and James Gibbs, the 3^rd Duke re-modelled Badminton as a palatial residence in the Palladian style. The 4^th Duke (1709-56), brought in William Kent to Badminton, who built the great Worcester Lodge and improved the North front. It is these additions that are recorded in Canaletto’s painting of 1748/9 (figure 2). Tindel remarked of the 4^th Duke, ‘A man of sense, spirit and activity, unblameable in his morals, but questionable in his political capacity’. A basket by Paul de Lamerie, 1740, pierced and engraved with the 4^th Duke’s armorials was sold Christie’s, London, 6^th July 1988, lot 169.

The original documented order
The Beaufort toilet set is remarkably well documented from the original purchase invoice through to its dispersal in the 20^th Century. The initial supply of the toilet service is recorded in an invoice of May 1730 detailing a total expenditure of £1525-2-10d from John White to the 3^rd Duke of Badminton, which was finally settled on 30^th July 1730:

May 1730
Delievered a set of polish’d dressing plate, w 576oz 9dwt at 8s 6d per oz 241 3s 4dFor the duty (on the service and other items) 21 14s 10d
For Engraving coats of armes borders and Crests 28 15s 3d

The set was given by the 3^rd Duke to his brother Charles in 1740, or left by him to his brother who succeeded as 4^th Duke in 1745 since the 3^rd Duke’s will mentions the following bequest:

I give to my said brother Lord Charles Noel Somerset all my plate and jewels of what sort and nature the same may be

Upon the death of the 4^th Duke in 1756, the trustees offered his plate at auction. The sale was held by Mr Prestage at his Great Room, Savile Row, on 20^th April 1757, and the service was included as lot 87. A document dated 28^th October 1756 – Mich. 1757 records the set as being re-purchased by the trustees on behalf of the infant 5^th Duke, together with the Thomas Germain surtout:

Ditto [purchased for his Grace] the Gilt Dressing Plate 189 11s 9 3/4d

The set is again recorded at Badminton, December 1835, in an inventory by James Cox of Tetbury, following the death of the 6^th Duke:

One Set of Dressing Plate consisting of Twenty six pieces

The ewer and basin were sold Christie’s, London, 17^th March 1999, lot 109 and again in Christie’s, New York, 16^th April 2004, lot 133, for $230,000. The pin cushion is in Colonial Williamsburg.⁴

The engraver Charles Gardner
Charles Gardner, who is credited with the exceptionally fine decoration on the Beaufort toilet set, is one of very few identified early 18^th Century silver engravers, including Joseph Sympson, John Rollos, William Hogarth and his master Ellis Gamble^5. Gardner, who became a freeman of the Goldsmiths Company in 1714 appears to have run a substantial workshop employing eleven apprentices and became a warden of the  Company in 1721. He is recorded as an engraver at Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, London and died Wednesday 29^th December at about seventy having drawn up his will 8^th December 1762⁷.The London Daily Advertiser of 1762 also records Gardner as a Professor of Music at Gresham College and one of the Common Council for the Ward of Farringdon.

The Tollemache family papers record direct commissions from Gardner between 1729-35 and he is also documented as working for the Goldsmiths’ Company in 1740. The following articles can be confidently attributed to Gardner on the basis of documentary evidence and upon stylistic grounds:

- Seal Salver, John White, London, 1728 (sold Sotheby’s, London, 8^th June 1995, lot 112), engraving signed C.Gardner Sculpt (figure 3)
- The Eyre Seal Salvers, Edward Vincent/John Liger, London, 1728/35 (see Sotheby’s, New York, 18^th October 2001, lot 115)
- The Beaufort toilet set, John White, London, 1729, discussed here
- Cup, John White, London, 1730 (sold Christie’s, New York, 17^th October 2002, lot 166)
- Bowl, John White, London, 1736-7, (Alan and Simone Hartmann Collection)⁸
- Salver, Thomas Farren, London, 1740 (Goldsmiths Company)^9
- Freedom Casket, Jasper Cust, London, circa 1740 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich)

The seal salver of 1728 which appeared on the market in 1995 established a clear link between John White and Charles Gardner. Arthur Grimwade had already noted in 1976 that White ‘either was, or employed, a particularly fine engraver who made considerable use of a grinning mask of Hogartian type in the cartouches enclosing coats of arms and in strapwork borders’¹⁰. It seems highly likely that the 'Mr Gardiner' referred to by the goldsmiths John White in the Badminton papers was indeed the renowned engraver:

London July 12 1729…I recd yours with a Bill of £300 on Rd Lockwood Esq and this day sent his Grace’s Plate to Badminton by John Sertain all packt in the best manner…I have this Post advertised Mr Gardiner of ye Plate as above and am Sr Your most humble servant John White

The decoration on the toilet set is derived from the influential publication of designs by Masson, published in Paris c1700-10 entitled Noveaux Desseins pour graver sur l’orfèvrerie. Inventés et graves par le sieur Masson, (figures 4 and 5). This included a variety of designs including the carré de toilette with comparable decoration to that on the covers of the caskets in the Beaufort set¹¹. The design of the Beaufort set was evidently influential. A similar set by Magdalen Feline, London, 1754 is at Dunham Massey, engraved with arms of Mary Booth, probably a fiftieth birthday gift from her father, George Booth, 2^nd Earl of Warrington¹²

The goldsmith John White
The elusive John White is associated with particularly fine plate of the 1720s and 1730s (figure 6). He became free on 3^rd December 1719, and a week later registered his first mark. White’s trade card  showed him at ‘the Golden Cup’, Arundel Street. He later moved to Green Street in Leicester Fields, where he was located close to Peter Archambo, Abraham Buteaux and Simon Pantin. Pieces bearing John White’s mark have strong similarities to those of these makers who comprised ‘the Lamerie group’. His clients included Lord Chancellor King and also the City of London, for which in 1735 he produced a new mace for the Lord Mayor.