A GEORGE III SILVER-GILT DESSERT SERVICE, COMPRISING A SET OF FOUR WINE COASTERS, EIGHT WINE LABELS AND AN HOURGLASS PATTERN CANTEEN, RETAILED BY RUNDELL, BRIDGE & RUNDELL, SHEFFIELD AND LONDON, 1807-16

COASTERS, John Roberts & Co, Sheffield, 1807, the interiors each engraved with a coat-of-arms; WINE LABELS, four Benjamin Smith, three Benjamin & James Smith, one Thomas & James Phipps, London, respectively 1808, 1809 and 1816; CANTEEN, the majority Eley, Fearn & Chawner, mostly 1808, the terminals engraved with a garter motto enclosing the initials JAW below a crest, comprising: 24 dessert spoons, 24 dessert forks, 24 teaspoons, 2 ice cream spades, 2 sauce ladles, 2 sugar sifters, 2 pairs of sugar tongs, 2 pairs of grape scissors (1807); also 24 dessert knives, Moses Brent, London, 1808, (106); all in original fitted brass-mounted mahogany case with dark green velvet lining and printed paper label: ‘RUNDELL, BRIDGE & RUNDELL Watch Makers Ec. To their Majesties, Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, Duke of York and ROYAL FAMILY, Ludgate Hill, London.’; the lid applied with an engraved brass name plate: ‘J.A. WILLINK ESQ^r.’; together with replacement key

The flatware terminals engraved with a garter motto enclosing the initials JAW below a crest, comprising: 24 dessert spoons, 24 dessert forks,24 teaspoons, 2 ice cream spades, 2 sauce ladles, 2 sugar sifters, 2 pairs of sugar tongs (1 dessert spoon and 2 teaspoons, Francis Higgins & Son, London, 1923) and 2 pairs of grape scissors (1807); also 24 dessert knives, Moses Brent, London, 1808, in original fitted brass-mounted mahogany case with dark green velvet lining and printed paper label: ‘RUNDELL, BRIDGE & RUNDELL Watch Makers Ec. To their Majesties, Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, Duke of York and ROYAL FAMILY, Ludgate Hill, London.’; the lid applied with an engraved brass name plate: ‘J.A. WILLINK ESQ^r.’; together with replacement key
4902gr, 157oz 12dwt of weighable silver

The arms, crest and motto on the coasters are those of Willink. The crest and motto are repeated on the table silver terminals together with the initials JAW for John Abraham Willink (d. 1852). He was member of the merchant banking and finance family, originally of Amsterdam, who are chiefly remembered as investors in the Louisiana Purchase (1803) which enabled the United States of America to acquire 828,000 miles of Louisiana from France. J.A. Willink and Daniel Willink were partners in trade in New York, under the firm of J.A. Willink & Co; they were also in business together in Liverpool with Charles Latham (J.A. Willink’s father-in-law) as D. & J.A. Willink & Co. Both these houses ceased trading during 1819, when they were said to have been ‘notoriously insolvent.’

A collection of family papers, including those of Willink, are in the Anita Lott Cruikshank collection of Kings County, New York; and a group of Daguerreotype portraits of members of the Willink family, including one of John Abraham Willink, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. For further information, see William Johnson, ‘E. Ludlow against Hurd & Sewall,’ Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature; and in the Court for the Trial of Impeachments and The Correction of Errors, in the State of New-York, Albany, 1822, pp. 218-223.