A CONTINENTAL SILVER-GILT TOILET BOX, INSET WITH A 17TH CENTURY NETHERLANDISH PLAQUETTE

The plaquette in the cover relates closely to the example by Adam van Vianen, Utrecht, 1610-12 illustrated by J.W. Fredericks in Dutch Silver, The Hague, 1952, no. 48E. The fact that Vianen’s plaquette appears not to be derived from a single printed source, but an invention comprising elements from a print of by Cornelisz Cort after Guilio Clovio, would suggest that the chaser of the toilet box cover might have been following the Vianen plaque itself.

HRH The Duke of Brunswick most probably refers to Ernest Augustus (1887-1953), head of the House of Hanover, whose ancestors had been Kings of Great Britain, Kings of Hanover and Dukes of Cumberland, and who had amassed in Germany, one of the world’s largest collections of silver. The latter two family titles had been superseded due to fighting on the losing side in two wars, the Austro-Prussian confrontation of 1866 and the First World War. The rift with Prussia was healed when Ernest Augustus married Princess Victoria Louise in 1913 and succeeded to the Dukedom of Brunswick which had since the war of 1866 been governed by a regent.