A George II silver sauce boat, Aymé Vedeau, London, 1743

Aymé Vedeau (otherwise known as Aymé Videau), son of John and Martha Vedeau, was born on 18 October 1708 and baptised at St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, on 27 October of the same year. He was apprenticed to David Willaume on 3 May 1723 and made free on 8 January 1734, shortly before he is thought to have entered his first mark (Grimwade, no. 106). He was made a Liveryman of the Goldsmiths' Company in September 1746 and is usually associated with his address in Green Street, Leicester Fields (now Irving Street, Leicester Square), in the Parish of St. James, Piccadilly. In 1773 Vedeau was appointed one of the executors of the will of his brother-in-law, Joseph Maleham, a taylor (proved 21 November 1775, National Archives, Kew, PROB 11/1013), when he ('my dear friend Amie Vedeau') was described as of Portland Street, St. James, Westminster, gentleman. He died in 1780, leaving instructions for his executrix, his widowed sister Catherine Maleham (d. 1782), that he should be interred in St. Paul, Covent Garden. His will, signed on 23 February 1780, was proved on 8 January 1781. (National Archives, Kew, PROB 11/1073)

Silver bearing Vedau's mark has long been popular with collectors of 18th century London-made silver. The good quality of the workmanship is often combined with fine chasing in the rococo style. A set of four silver-gilt tapering oval beakers, Aymé Vedeau, London, 1743, is particularly noteworthy for the finely engraved vignettes of a milkmaid walking by a walled estate, a nobleman and a young woman seated by a sphinx in an elegant garden, a country lad resting by a obelisk and an elegant couple conversing on a terrace, all within elaborate rococo cartouches. These beakers have been sold twice by Sotheby's; once in London on 28 January 1965, lot 163 (£3,800); and again in New York on 22 April 1998, lot 308 ($240,000).