The Burghley Centerpiece: An Important George II silver-gilt epergne and plateau, Edward Wakelin, retailed by George Wickes and Samuel Netherton, London, 1755

The Epergne:
the frame rising from four vigorously scrolled and foliate feet, linked by asymmetrical aprons of scrolls, grapevine, and fruits, rising to distorted and ruffled cartouches supporting the oval central basket with fruit and floral cast pendants below openwork sides, scrolling rim, surrounded by four spiraled arms rising to leaf-form stands, the central bowl engraved with the Cecil crest, supporters and coronet, marked on basket and frame (at top on two sides), the branches with maker and lion passant and numbered 1 to 4; basket with scratch weight 246=16;



The Plateau:
the rounded rectangular plateau supported on four knuckled scroll legs, two headed by high-relief forequarters of goats climbing over scalework panels, the other two with cut-out heads overlaid with high-relief sprays of fruit, all linked by the deeply molded cast border rising to vigorous scrolls at each end, the surface embossed and chased with a fruiting grapevine, rising in the center and curling away at points to reveal matted segments, marked on rim, the underside engraved with scratch weight 233=11.

Commissioned by Brownlow, 9th Earl of Exeter, from Wickes and Netherton; listed 31 December 1756 at £ 338
By descent to
William, 3rd Marquess of Exeter (1825-1895), sold
Christie's London, The Marquis of Exeter, Burghley House, June 7, 1888, lot 17, £358 to Wertheimer
Asher Wertherimer (d. 1918), thence to his widow, sold by the
Executors of Mrs. Asher Wertheimer
Christie's London, February 28, 1923, lot 37, £299 to P. Thomas
The Hon. Clive Pearson, sold
Christie's London, March 14, 1944, lot 42 (now gilded), £225 to Black
Christie's London, December 18, 1997, lot 143

London: Court of St. James, Old Silver Work, Chiefly English, from the XVth to the XVIIIth Centuries, 1902, case S19
London: Garrard's, The Exhibition of Choice Old English Plate from Private Collections in AId of the Funds British Red Cross Society, 1915, no. 221 (A. Wertheimer Esq.)

Charles J. Jackson, Old English Plate, London, 11th Edition, p. 404
Ellenor M. Alcorn, English Silver in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, vol. II (2000), p. 184
Helen Clifford, Silver in London: The Parker and Wakelin Partnership, 1760-1776.  New Haven: Yale, 2004, pp. 28-29, fig. 20

epergne: old reinforcements behind, probably original, one seam on underlip of central basket opening, on grape tendril separating, a few fractures at top of frame. plateau: some scratches to surface, seam opening at the top of one foot, possibly some grapes missing from clusters, old (original?) reinforcements underneath. All good crisp condition and fantastic modeling and chasing, possibly thinly lacquered
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.

This exceptional piece represents one of the high points of the late English rococo;  its superbly executed design shows the full flowering of the style just before the advent of Neoclassicism.

THE PATRON

Brownlow, 9^th Earl of Exeter (1725-1793) succeeded his father in 1754, aged 29.  He served as M.P. for Rutland 1747-54, and Lord Lieutenant of Rutland 1751-79.  He married firstly in 1749 Letitia, daughter and heir of the Hon. Horatio Townshend; she died in 1756.

His main interest, though, was collecting and connoisseurship.  Within two years of his accession he had hired Capability Brown to work at Burghley; the project would take almost twenty-five years.  He completed the great state rooms, left unfinished by his great-grandfather, patronizing Ince and Mayhew and John Linnell for furniture and Bartoli for scagliola.  He made four trips to Italy, socializing with Sir William Hamilton, David Garrick, Earl Spencer and his Countess, Edward Gibbon, and Lord Palmerston; his picture purchases included Veronese, Bassano, Claude, and Poussin.  He acquired portraits from Angelica Kauffman, fireplaces from Piranesi, sculpture from Joseph Nollekens, and antiquities from Thomas Jenkins.  He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Society of Arts, and his great house still bears testament to his interests.

THE SERVICE

The new 9^th Earl inherited an important collection of silver, including the great 3500 ounce wine cooler by Philip Rollos, the smaller cistern and fountain of 1728 by Thomas Farren, and the ewers and dishes received as Coronation perquisites by various Earls serving as Grand Almoners of England.[1]  What Brownlow apparently did not have, though, were the new forms used for modern dining.  To remedy this, he ordered over 5,000 ounces of silver from George Wickes and Samuel Netherton, on Panton Street – "Goldsmiths & Jewellers, Silversmiths to their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess Dowager of Wales."[2]

The whole service bears comparison to the famous "Leinster Service," ordered from the same firm a decade before.[3]  Even the borders are the same,[4] but the new Earl of Exeter seems determined to outdo his Hiberian counterpart the Earl of Kildare (later Duke of Leinster).  Where the latter ordered two tureens and stands, by the end of the 1760s Exeter had six.  The centerpiece of the Leinster service is a "trellis" epergne on a circular plateau, derived from a William Kent design of before 1744 and weighing 427 ounces.  Exeter's epergne and plateau are from the next generation, leaving the baroque behind for a vigorous naturalism – and weighing in at 480 ounces.

Other forms in the Exeter service show similar advancements and particularities: condiment urns, which appear almost for the first time in the Leinster service, are here a triad of miniature rococo urns, as suitable for a garden trellis as for a dining table.  The cruet stands are almost identical, but the piercing on the Exeter examples displays an asymmetrical scroll in the place of the balanced design on the 1740s examples.  Burghley perhaps had a shorter walk to the dining room, as the Earl of Exeter does not seem to have acquired numerous dish covers, but he added his own choice of forms.  His pair of vertical cheese stands, beautifully pierced for their rather plebian role of holding a wheel of cheddar upright, are among the only examples known of the form, and one was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The Earl must have been very fond of cheese, as he also acquired two smaller circular cheese stands, salver-form pieces which held the wheels horizontally.[5]

THE MAKER AND THE SUPPLIER[6]

The firm to which the Earl of Exeter turned was itself in a moment of transition.  The Panton Street shopfront to which he applied had the banner of Wickes and Netherton.  George Wickes had registered his first mark in 1721/22 and moved to Panton Street in 1735.  The same year he was appointed goldsmith to Frederick, Prince of Wales; Panton Street was convenient to St. James, and to Leicester Square, where the Prince was living from the later 1730s.  Other clients included Sir Robert Walpole and the Dukes of Chandos and Devonshire.  The year 1735 also saw Wickes take into his house Samuel Netherton, ward of a client and friend, who would later be an apprentice, then right-hand man, then from 1750 partner, despite the 25-year difference in their ages.

Ledgers now at the Victoria and Albert Museum reveal to what extent the retailers Wickes & Netherton relied on an extensive group of sub-contractors and outworkers, particularly by the time of Lord Exeter's commissions.  Primary among them was Edward Wakelin, their main supplier from late 1740s; after 1747 very few items from the shop would bear Wickes' mark.  Wakelin was apprenticed in 1730 to John Hugh Le Sage, a Huguenot goldsmith who later became Subordinate Royal Goldsmith.  He seems to have gone to work primarily for Wickes about 1744, when the latter acquired a new building, one over from his current address, to serve as a workshop; Wakelin is certainly recorded slightly later as living above the new address.  By 1747 the lease on this workshop was transferred to Wakelin; the same year he entered his own mark at the Goldsmiths' Hall, and he seems to have taken over almost the entirety of the silver side of Wickes and Netherton's business (exclusive of flatware, cutlery, and smalls).  At the time of Lord Exeter's centerpiece, he was managing a workshop of generally three to four unskilled waged employees, plus two to three apprentices.  Wakelin's supply books indicate that specialized work was generally subcontracted, such as William Solomon for casting, John Christopher Romer for chasing, and Samuel Paddison for polishing.

THE DESIGN

By the 1740s, the epergne was finding the form in which it was best known, with the earlier central tureen being superseded by a basket, surrounded by a constellation of dishes or baskets on arms, all raised on a legged framework.  The Dysart epergne of 1749, centered by an oval basket, shows well this incarnation.[7]  In the 1750s the ends of the central basket began to curl upwards into a boat shape, the frame began to lose its strong architectural curves in favor of rococo foliage and scrolls, and the dishes on their arms morphed from geometric circles into other forms. 

The Burghley centerpiece is one of the most extreme developments of the style: the whole form of the frame has disappeared underneath cascades of grapes and clusters of other fruit.  Only the strong curves of the feet recall the architectural form of its predecessors, but these dissolve into a harvest bounty of fruit, while stretched between them like cobwebs are cartouches so ruffled and attenuated that comes as no surprise when they burst into leaf, or loose ends curl up like wood shavings.  Meandering tendrils – ribbed and curving like grapevine – open into naturalistic leaves on which it must have been difficult to balance stacks of fruit or sweetmeats when actually using the piece for the service of food.  The central basket, which in later epergnes will rise from a narrow ring and appear incomplete by itself, here looks as if it should only be stable on its supporting base – but in fact it is a wonderful rococo piece just on its own, the sides pierced with sprays of flowers and the whole resting on fragile foliate pendants and splayed bunches of grapes; the wear on the bottom of these elements show that the basket was used independently quite often.

Stylistically, an immediate predecessor to the Burghley epergne is the example in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, also by Edward Wakelin, 1755.[8]  The Boston example has not broken as free of the architectural form as Lord Exeter's piece does: the central basket rises from a surprisingly undecorated ring support, and while the aprons are decorated with fruit and flower sprays, pursued by the forequarters of a hungry goat, the piercing and casting are not such as to dissolve the form of the stand.  While the supports for the corner dishes begin as vine tendrils, they end in mundane and serviceable plain rings, supporting fluted and circular dishes that – while the norm for a rococo epergne – are uninspired compared to the Burghley vine leaves.  They were probably easier to actually present food in, though, and could be detached and used separately; the Boston central basket, however, cannot - at least not in an aesthetically successful manner.[9]

A third epergne is even closer to the Burghley example.[10]  It bears the marks of John Parker and Edward Wakelin, so must date to after the beginning of their partnership in 1758.  It was made for Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, who as an avid gardener must have appreciated its fruit and foliage.  The frame is almost identical to Lord Exeter's, but the vine-leaf dishes are much closer to the body, giving a vertical and slightly cramped aspect compared to the horizontal line – almost a swag – that extends through the middle of the Burghley composition.  Also, the sides of the central basket are pierced with diaper, a regular pattern at odds with the rampant naturalism of the rest of the design.

Neither of these other two epergnes is known to have had a plateau, perhaps the most exciting, unusual, and rococo element of the whole centerpiece.  In writing on the Boston example, Ellenor Alcorn paid tribute to this piece:
The stand for the Burghley epergne is an extraordinary conceit: the highly polished domed surface is torn away in irregular sections to reveal a matted subsurface.  Naturalistic grapevines and leaves, raspberries, and clusters of fruit trail across the plateau, and goat's heads emerge above alternate feet.[11]

This "layered" surface effect, derived from auricular decoration of the mid 17^th century, was appreciated by the earlier generation of English rococo goldsmiths and designers.  Its most sophisticated exponent was the Maynard Master, an unnamed modeler and chaser active 1736-c. 1745 who was connected with the workshop of Paul de Lamerie.[12]  In the borders of the Mountrath dish of 1742, now in the Gilbert Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum,[13] the outer membrane rips back to expose a matted surface, the edges curling up on themselves in corkscrew scrolls; a detail of this was used as the cover for the 1990 exhibition on Lamerie at the Goldsmiths' Hall.[14]  For all of their irregular outlines, though, the frames enclose allegorical figures centering each side of the dish, as on baroque examples.  Much closer to the meandering, naturalistic feel of the Burghley plateau is the bowl made by Lamerie in 1744 for David Franks of Philadelphia, now in the Metropolitan Museum.[15]  Here the revealed matted surfaces have been overlaid with applied leaves and foliage, producing many different levels on the surface of the object.

It is not known what modeler/chaser, having learned the lessons of the Maynard Master, created this plateau for Wakelin.[16]  While the border is cast with its high relief fruits and escaping goats, the central surface is chased with a skill almost as gorgeous on the underside as on the top; the craftsman was able to move the design harmoniously between the techniques.  Other English centerpieces of the mid 18^th century incorporate plateaux, but usually these consist of a cast border and a flat surface, sometimes decorated with engraving.  Often this was dictated by the desire to incorporate salts, casters, or cruets on the plateau, as on epergnes of the 1730s; even so rococo a conceit as Crespin's Marine centerpiece for Frederick, Prince of Wales has surprising flat points in its riot of decoration, which become voids without their intended dishes.  A few years later, Parker and Wakelin's monumental 1760 centerpiece and plateau for the Duke of Bolton,[17] while it shares the shaped plateau, goat's forequarters, and cast fruit seen here, has surprising flat and undecorated spaces in each side of the central tureen – suggesting missing accessories.  We know that condiment urns and cruets were delivered to the Earl of Exeter as part of his service (see earlier), but they would have been hard pressed to stand on this irregular service; the whole plateau has become a canvas for the artist in silver.

It is interesting to look closely at the creativity and technical skill displayed in the Burghley Centerpiece, and to note how it is comparatively missing in some contemporary productions, from even the same workshop.  In 1755, the same year as the centerpiece, a Frenchman André Rouquet wrote on The Present State of the Arts in England.  He noted that a private client "consults only his own taste, which inclines him to have the work perfectly executed; hence he is afraid to beat the artist down in his price, lest he should be disappointed."  On the other hand, "the shopkeeper or merchant who employs an artist with a view of profit, acts upon a different footing.  He requires only a certain degree of perfection.  As soon as the man he employs has finished his work for common sale, every step beyond that is so much out of pocket... then he stops the artist's hand and at the same time the progress of the art."[18]  The 9^th Earl of Exeter, with almost boundless means and beginning on a career of notable artistic patronage, seems to exactly represent Rouquet's first – and ideal – example.

LATER HISTORY

The 9^th Earl seems to have completed most of his plate purchases by 1770; a Burghley inventory from the following decades cites three dining rooms and a breakfast room in the house.[19]  The centerpiece descended in the family to the time of William Alleyne, 3^rd Marquess of Exeter, who inherited in 1867.  He was responsible for the "outbreak of yachts and racehorses which decimated the family fortunes during the nineteenth century."[20]  By 1885 he had debts of £330,000, and in 1888 there was a three-day sale at Christie's including Dutch and Flemish paintings, mounted porcelains, and the epergne.  Lot 17 was purchased for £358 by "Wertheimer."

Asher Wertheimer (1843-1918) and his brother Charles were among the most well-known and successful art dealers in late Victorian and Edwardian London. They were the sons of Samson Wertheimer, a native of Bavaria who settled in England in 1830 and gained renown as a 'bronze, ormolu and marquetrie manufacturer, cabinet maker and dealer in antiques, by special appointment to the Queen' at 154 New Bond Street.  After their father's death in 1892 the brothers separated, with Asher continuing at the Bond Street address as a well-known dealer in works of art.  He inherited his father's flair and was conspicuous in trade circles for his well-publicized purchases and list of important clients.  According to his obituary in The Times,[21] his greatest deal was the 1893 private purchase of the Hope family's collection of 83 Dutch and Flemish old masters, for £121,550. 

In 1871 Wertheimer married Flora Joseph, herself the daughter of an art dealer.  By the 1890s the couple lived at 8 Connaught Place, Hyde Park, where the dining room – the probably location of the Burghley Centerpiece – displayed eight of the famous series of twelve portraits of the Wertheimers by John Singer Sargent.  The artist himself dined with the family once a week, and they referred to the room as "Sargent's mess."  Asher Wertheimer died in 1918, leaving an estate of £750,000, and his widow survived him by only four years.  On her death the Sargent portraits were removed to the National Gallery (later moved to the Tate), and in early 1923 Christie's held a sale for her executors.  The sale reveals the family's fondness for silver, including not just the Burghley piece but also George Wickes' wonderful 1735 ewer and basin for the Corporation of the City of Bristol.[22]

In March 1944 both the Burghley centerpiece and the Bristol ewer and basin reappeared at Christie's, being sold by the Hon. Clive Pearson, younger son of the industrialist peer the 1^st Viscount Cowdray.  Parham Park in East Sussex is known for the collection of early furniture, paintings, and needlework assembled by Pearson and his wife Alicia after they acquired the house in 1922.  The centerpiece next appeared at auction in the early 1990s, when it was acquired by the Safras.

[1] Oliver Impey. The Cecil Family Collects: Four Centuries of Decorative Arts from Burghley House, 1998, nos. 104, 108-09
[2] Per the firm's trade card, see Barr, p. 173, fig. 108
[3] The service was made between 1745 and 1747; see Barr 1980, Appendix II
[4]  Almost the same border was used on the service assembled by the Earl of Buckinghamshire for his Embassy to Russia in 1763 (see lot 808), suggesting it was considered the deluxe model in the middle years of the century.
[5] Lot 62 in the 1958 Christie's sale, the arms on these were changed and they were sold unrecognized Sotheby's New York, April 15, 2010, lot 284.
[6] The following two paragraphs are drawn almost entirely from Elaine Barr, George Wickes, and Helen Clifford, Silver in London: The Parker and Wakelin Partnership 1760-1776.
[7] Sold Sotheby's London, May 27, 2004, lot 109
[8] Alcorn 2000, no. 112, pp. 183-185
[9]  Ibid. references another epergne by Wakelin, 1755-56, sold Christie's New York, October 5, 1983, lot 155.  This is even more conservative; while the piercing of the basket evokes the Burghley piece, the rest of the stand is solidly present, the foliate piercing of the shoulders not relieving the heaviness of the design, and the fruits very much contained in openwork aprons between the legs.
[10] Illustrated Arthur Grimwade, Rococo Silver, 1727-1765, no. 47B, and Michael Clayton, The Collector's Dictionary of Silver and Gold of Great Britain and North America, no. 263, p. 126.
[11] Alcorn 2000, p. 184
[12]  See Ellenor Alcorn, Beyond the Maker's Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection,Cambridge: John Adamson, 2006, pp. 29-33.
[13] Timothy B. Schroder, The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, Los Angeles, 1988, no. 65, pp. 249-255
[14]  London: Goldsmiths' Hall, 1990: Paul de Lamerie, at the Sign of the Golden Ball: The Work of England's Master Silversmith (1688-1751)
[15]  Ibid., no. 110, p. 162
[16]  Another design probably from the same hand is the pair of candelabra marked by Wakelin, 1752, forming part of the Bristol civic plate (illustrated Clifford 2004, fig. 24, p. 24).  Several details, particularly the fluted corkscrew scroll at the juncture of the branches, recall elements of the Burghley piece.
[17]  Alcorn 2000, no. 115, pp. 188-190
[18] Cited Alcorn 2006, pp. 32-33
[19] Impey 1998, p. 55.
[20] Lady Victoria Leatham, Life at Burghley: Restoring one of England's Great Houses, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1992, p. 177
[21] August 12, 1918, p. 9
[22] Resold Sotheby's London, June 13, 1983, lot 45