Lot 425
  • 425

The Maxwell Vase: A Monumental American Silver Presentation Vase and Stand, made by Thomas Fletcher of Fletcher & Gardiner, Philadelphia, and retailed by Baldwin Gardiner, New York, 1829

Estimate
250,000 - 350,000 USD
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Description

  • marked on base of bowl, top of stand, and underside of stand B GARDINER - NEW YORK
  • silver
  • height overall 24 in.
  • 61cm
the tri-form base raised on three hairy paw feet with openwork and partly-matted acanthus headers, the edge carved on one side with the original 1829 presentation inscription, and on one corner and another side with an excerpt from the Maxwell's will of 1873, supporting three addorsed and winged sphinxes, whose tails rising to rosettes and openwork classical foliage, supporting a beaded-edge disk into which the vase proper sits; the Warwick-form vase with acanthus foot and lower body, leaf-tip border, fluted and reeded entwined forked handles ending at the rim in grape clusters and leaves

Provenance

As inscribed:
Presented to HUGH MAXWELL Esq.by the Merchants of the CITY of NEW YORK in testimony of their high opinion of the ABILITY, FIRMNESS, INDUSTRY, PERSEVERANCE & PUBLIC SPIRIT exhibited by him in the discharge of his duties as DISTRICT ATTORNEY, A.D. 1829.
Left to the New York Law Institute on Maxwell's death, March 31, 1873.

Exhibited

New York: New York Historical Society, on loan 1959-2009.
Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC: Mint Museum of Hart, and Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1993-94: Classical Taste in America, 1800-1840, no. 99.
New York: The Winter Antiques Show, 2005: The New-York Historical Society Bicentennial: Celebrating Two Centuries of Collecting.
New York: Metropolitan Museum and Winterthur, Delaware: H.F. du Pont Winterthur Museum, 2007. Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher & Sidney Gardiner: 1808-1842, no. 51, pp. 182-83.

Literature

Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America: 1800-1840, Baltimore: Museum of Art, 1993, no 99, p. 139, 293.
Donald L. Fennimore, Elegant Patterns of Uncommon Good Taste: Domestic Silver by Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner (Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1971), p. 90.
Donald L. Fennimore and Ann K. Wagner, Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher & Sidney Gardiner: 1808-1842, Winterthur Museum, 2007, pp. 182-83.
Graham Hood, American Silver: A History of Style, 1650-1900, New York: Praeger, 1971, pp. 197, 200-201
Katharine Morrison McClinton, Collecting American 19th Century Silver, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968, p. 133.
Ann K. Wagner, Fletcher and Gardiner: Presentation Silver for the Nation (Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 2004), 78-79
Deborah Dependahl Waters, "'Silver Ware in Great Perfection': The Precious-Metals Trades in New York City" in Art and the Empire CIty: New York, 1825-1861, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000, fig. 296, p. 360.

Condition

very good condition
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Following the Crash of 1825-26, the value of the New York Stock Exchange – then just sixty-seven companies – fell by more than 30%.  By 1829, eighteen companies would fail or be shut down, with scandalous revelations about the financial practices of the directors.  Hugh Maxwell, the District Attorney of New York City, obtained indictments for conspiracy against several of these directors, and the ensuing criminal trials helped spawn the first legislation to protect the interests of investors.  A group of "Merchants of New York" took up a collection for a testimonial to be presented to Maxwell; no contributer was allowed to give more than two dollars. 

The order was placed with New York retailer Baldwin Gardiner, who had just moved in 1826 from Philadelphia.  There, Gardiner had been in business with Lewis Vernon in a fancy goods store, the business associated with the successful silver firm run by Baldwins' brother Sidney Gardiner and Vernon's relative Thomas Fletcher.  Sidney died in 1827, before the Maxwell commission, but Baldwin Gardiner still turned to his late brother's partner for this considerable order.  Although Fletcher & Gardiner had won the competition for the design and manufacture of the two massive vases given by "The Merchants of Pearl Street" to Dewitt Clinton in 1824 (Metropolitan Museum), a letter of preserved in the Philadelphia Atheneum reveals Baldwin Gardiner's subterfuge in sending this commission to his former associates (italics in the original, bold face added):

[To Thomas Fletcher, 29 August 1828[
Dear Sir: I have been applied to, to make a
Splendid Vase & a pair of Pitchers, intended to be presented by the Citizens of new York to Mr. [Hugh] Maxwell (The District Att[orne]y) as a token of their respect and approbation of his course of persecuting the late conspiracy cases, so called – The price to be paid of the Vase & Pitchers, from $800 to $1000.  These are the particulars.

If you are disposed to make them, and in such a way as will answer my just expectations of profit, I shall be glad to have you undertake...– and I am ready to say I shall be satisfied with a very small profit; the more so to enable you to bestow the greater pains in their elegant execution, for I shall look as much to the honor of [the] thing, as to the profit.  Of course, I shall expect to have my name stamped on the bottom.  In order, however, to let you see that I am frank and open on this point, I hold Mr. Cary [John S. Crary] that I would apply to you, by name, to make them; and have told him that within a week, I would show him your drawings for such as is proposed to make.  Mr. Cary told me that he had 'the say' in the business and that I should make them.  None of the silversmiths here know that I have the order, as several of them would drop the hammer for me if they knew that I sent to Philad. – and as soon as I am ready for such as course on their part, I shall be very glad to have them.  Please let me know your answer and if you intent to undertake them.  Let me know how soon I may expect your drawings... N.B. I am now having made besides the 'opposition' vase for Mr. Eckford  (cited Fennimore 1971, p. 90).

The vases seem to have dispensed with, allowing all of the funds to be concentrated on this single impressive item – which indeed bears only the mark of B. GARDINER - NEW YORK.  The piece was presented to Maxwell in the fall of 1829:
A silver vase, weight 730 [sic] ounces, and said to be a most splendid article, not surpassed in design and finish in this country, was, on Tuesday last week, presented to Hugh Maxwell, esq. by a committee of merchants (Niles' Weekly Register, October 3, 1829, p. 90).Hugh Maxwell

Hugh Maxwell was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1787 and came to the United States as a child.  He graduated from Columbia College in 1808, and was admitted to the bar in New York City.  In 1814 he was appointed assistant judge – advocate general of the U.S. Army.  Elected as district attorney for New York, he served from 1819 to 1839.  He was described as "deeply and thoroughly learned in the English and American criminal law, with rare elocutionary powers, a pleasing, genial manner, he was formidable before a jury.  But his natural hatred of crime gave him that determination in the trial of criminals which sometimes rendered him obnoxious to the charge of being vindictive in his efforts to convict the persons indicted" (L.B. Proctor, The Bench and Bar of New York, 1870).  A later visitor described him as "a great tall gangling fellow, with a sly countenance, slipery [sic] tongue and slip slop gate: his face is fair, long and brazen" (Patricia C. Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett, 1999, p. 333-34).

 

"Notable among the convictions which he obtained were those of the banker, Jacob Barker, and the shipbuilder, Henry Eckford – both well-known citizens – for conspiracy to defraud insurance companies" (History of the Bench and Bar of New York, p. 415); this refers to the Conspiracy Trials following the crash of 1825 which occasioned the presentation of this vase.  In his opening statement, Maxwell accused the defendants of using their interlocking positions and secret transactions to "divert from their proper objects the funds of the stockbrokers... [and] to employ those funds for the private uses of those who managed the concerns" (Eric Hilt, "Wall Street's First Corporate Governance Crisis: The Conspiracy Trials of 1826", conference paper).  Twelve different attorneys represented the defendants, and the initial trials took 25 days, with each day's proceedings being reported in the press.

 

The first trial resulted in a hung jury; the second, when the defendants were found guilty, the verdict was overturned on appeal – some of the jurors supposedly being prejudiced by the first trial.  With the final trial, opening in June, 1827, one of the defendants was tried separately and found guilty.  Some of the other indictments also found guilty verdicts, but on being appealed, the courts decided that the indictment of "conspiracy" was too vague, and ended the prosecutions.

 

From 1849 to 1852 Maxwell was collector of the port of New York.  He was president of the Saint Andrew's Society, and on his death March 31, 1873, was at 86 years old its oldest member.  In his will, he left this symbol of popular support for his prosecutions 50 years before to the New York Law Institute, together with two portraits (see lot 424).

 

 

The Design

The form of the vase is taken from the Warwick vase, the monumental Roman marble vase "restored" under the aegis of Sir William Hamilton, engraved by Piranesi, and sold to Hamilton's nephew the Earl of Warwick.  When Thomas Fletcher visited the Royal Goldsmiths Rundell, Bridge, and Rundell in London in 1815, his letter book notes:

 

Here I saw elegant silver chased work, the first I have met with... a fine vase copied from one in the possession of the Earl of Warwick... which was dug from the ruins of Herculaneum.  [It] is beautifully made – it is oval... the handles are grape stalks and a vine runs all around covered with leaves & clusters of grapes (cited Silversmiths to the Nation, p. 69).

 

The Warwick Vase handle design had already been used by Fletcher for the Dewitt Clinton vases of 1824-25, but mounted on square plinths.  For Baldwin Gardiner's command of 1829, Fletcher placed his silver Warwick vase on a tripod support of addorsed sphinxes, a sophisticated design probably without parallel in his work.  The inspiration probably came again from Rundell, Bridge and Rundell.  Tripod animals, particularly sphinxes, were a favorite motif of Rundell's designer Jean-Jacques Boileau.  Many of the forms were designed by him in the "Egyptian" style around 1805-06 but continued to be produced by Rundell's (see Christopher Hartop, Royal Goldsmiths: The Art of Rundell & Bridge, figs. 43, 45 and 46, pp. 55-57). 

 

The idea of a tripod support of animals entered into the "house" design vocabulary of Rundell's, such as the three lions supporting tureens for the Duke of Northumberland, marked 1816 and possibly in production at the time of Fletcher's visit (ibid., fig. 57).  It was continued by sculptor John Flaxman (probably worked up by designer Edwards Hodges Bailey) in pieces of the early 1820s as plate strived for a new monumentality (ibid. fig. 104, 107).  Fletcher may not have known these later designs personally, but their grandeur of effect was what he was aiming for when he elevated his Warwick Vase on a sophisticated openwork tripod base.

 

It is worth comparing the Maxwell vase, designed by Fletcher, to that given to one of the opposing parties in the lawsuit, Henry Eckford.  Baldwin Gardiner had the commission for both, as his letter to Fletcher shows, but he only tapped the Philadelphian's design talents for one of the pieces.  The Eckford Vase, in the collection of the New York Historical Society, is a stocky two-handled covered urn, laden with conventional acanthus and closer to the heavy style of the 1840s than Fletcher's inspired Empire design, which Graham Hood called "probably the grandest virtuoso effect in silver of these years."