A French gilt-bronze mounted Chinese turquoise porcelain pot-pourri, the porcelain Kangxi (1662-1722), the mounts 19th century in Louis XV style

Acquired by Samuel Cunliffe-Lister, 1st Baron Masham of Swinton (1815-1906), circa 1890 for Swinton Park, North Yorkshire;

thence by descent to his grand-daughter and heir Mary Constance "Molly" Boynton (d.1890-1974), who married Philip Lloyd-Greame (who took the name Cunliffe-Lister), later 1st Earl of Swinton, and by descent to the Trustees of the Lord Swinton Will Trust.

Introduction to the collection of the 1st Baron Masham of Swinton

Much of the collection at Swinton Park, from which the following group of mounted porcelain pieces emanates, was formed by Samuel Cunliffe Lister, 1st Baron Masham of Swinton (1815-1906) who had purchased the house and the majority of its contents in 1883. He established a considerable collection of French furniture and objets d'art of which these pieces were included. The acquisition of these precious objects, some of which were pictured in the house, present Baron Masham as a refined connoisseur of decorative arts, particularly 18th century mounted porcelain, in the tradition of French ancien régime collecting.

The 1st Baron Masham developed his collection through three principal means: via a network of dealers; from sales at auction houses; and finally, through his friends and acquaintances. It is recorded that he purchased in particular from the dealer Davis of Pall Mall and was also advised by Sir J. C. Robinson, first Curator of the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Notable pieces from the collection of Baron Masham have appeared on the market such as the exceptional three-piece garniture sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, Treasures from the Prestigious Qizilbash Collection, 28-29 November 2016, lot 9 (1,147,500 EUR) and the Chinese black and gold pot-pourri vase sold at Sotheby’s, London, The Dimitri Mavrommatis Collection, 8 July 2008, lot 64 (2,169,250 GBP).

The taste for 18th century mounted porcelain

The practice of mounting porcelain from the Far East with metal was established in Europe at least by the end of the 14th century. Asian porcelain was considered exotic and rare; and like other precious objects, such as those made from semi-precious stones, rock crystal or porphyry, the use of mounts in silver, silver gilt and occasionally gold signified the important status of Chinese porcelain. The use of rich materials for mounting amplified the preciousness of the object it framed. On a purely practical level, the addition of metal mounts provided protection for the fragile porcelain body. Around 1700, treasured porcelains were less frequently confined in cabinets of curiosities and emerged as decoration for entire rooms. In eighteenth-century France there were also more intimate and smaller rooms, and the importation of Chinese porcelain became more accessible. The taste for mounted porcelain was therefore exploited to its full by the Parisian marchand-merciers such as Lazare Duvaux (1703-1758) and Thomas-Joachim Hebert (1687-1773), supplying the nobility and wealthy in both France and the fashionable courts of Europe. In France, the most popular types of porcelain for mounting were at first the blue-and-white wares that were arriving in the late 17th century. By the 18th century, taste gradually changed and the celadons and other monochrome wares tended to be preferred for mounting.

Mounts in the rococo style seemed to be particularly well adapted to the character of oriental porcelain. Many of these mounts are restricted to a stand and collar, or even handles, and are composed of fairly simple rocaille motifs. But, with the help of imagination, the mounts became more and more complex, twisted, intertwined and enriched with abundant foliate motifs, sometimes modifying the form and use of the original piece. Owing to lack of symbols or signatures, most of these works remain anonymous, but we can safely cite, among the inspirers of the rocaille style, ornamentation specialists such as Juste Aurèle Meissonier and Nicolas Pineau, and among the bronze workers, the famous Jacques and Philippe Caffieri, Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain, and Jean-Claude Duplessis, to name only the most reputed.

The new neoclassical style, which was increasingly evident in France toward the latter end of the 1750s, did not accommodate itself nearly so well to Far Eastern styles and designs. In addition, at just this moment, economic pressures encouraged the use of the relatively newly invented porcelain manufactures at Sèvres rather than foreign imports. The Sèvres factory, as if to emphasize its determination to compete with oriental porcelains, began to produce monochrome vases of oriental shape. Under the direction of ornamentalists such as Jean-François de Neufforge and especially Jean-Charles Delafosse, this Greek style is characterised by robust forms, predominantly straight lines, and ornamental motifs such as rosettes, friezes of posts or Grecias, deep flutes, heavy garlands of foliage, putti, powerful acanthus leaves, lion heads, etc. The chief proponents of this new style and the most accomplished makers of this period being the bronziers Pierre Gouthière and Pierre Philippe Thomire.

It is known that the transformation from pure, unadorned ceramic to the mounted European object was carried out through the agency of the ingenious Parisian dealers in luxury goods, the marchands-merciers whose role was to present collectors with something new, to work with bronze founders in the making of the mounts and to create a fashionable object. They created nothing themselves but employed other craftsmen including bronze casters and gilders to work on their ideas and their designs. The Livre-journal, or sales ledger, of the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux has survived and gives an extraordinary peek into the fashion for mounted porcelain. The ledger describes a wide variety of types of mounted porcelain and their prices, as well as the price of unmounted porcelain and the cost of the mounts.

Le Goût Rothschild & Similar collections in the 19th century

Though the tradition of mounting porcelain gradually declined in the 19th century, the collecting of 18th century mounted porcelain was vigorously adopted by 19th century collectors, drawn to the taste of the ancien régime. In Britain, these collectors included the 3rd and 4th Marquess of Hertford, Francis Charles Seymour-Conway and Richard Seymour-Conway, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild at Waddesdon Manor (Buckinghamshire) and his relatives, and William Beckford at Fonthill and his son-in-law, William, 12th Duke of Hamilton. Towards the end of the century, the "goût Rothschild" was all the rage and it seems that, for the decoration of Swinton Park, the 1st Baron of Swinton drew inspiration straight from the catalogues of works of art and paintings belonging to Mr. Alfred de Rothschild, published in 1884.

Samuel Cunliffe Lister, 1st Baron Masham of Swinton (1815-1906)

Samuel Cunliffe Lister was born at Calverley House in 1815, the son of an affluent textile mill owner who himself became a successful inventor and textile industrialist. Lister devoted great part of his long career to invention, taking out over 150 patents and held a key role in the development of the textile industry in England. His wool-combing machine, separating the long from the short hair of wool, helped to lower the price of clothing and his silk-combing machine utilized silk waste, which was quite revolutionary at the time. As a great benefactor of the city of Bradford, a statue of him still stands at the main entrance of Bradford’s Lister Park depicting him standing with his left hand resting on a scroll of paper, presumably plans of his inventions.

He was educated with a view to entering the Church, his grandmother having bequeathed him the rectory of Addingham on the condition that he should take holy orders. However, Lister preferred a commercial and mechanical career, and on leaving school he took a position with a commercial firm in Liverpool, and visited the United States several times, before ultimately settling down in Bradford. Soon after he came of age, his father Ellis Cunliffe Lister, gave him, and his brother John, Manningham Mills, which in their hands would become the largest silk and velvet mill in the world. By 1888 Manningham Mill employed almost five thousand people, and at its height employed eleven thousand.

Lister eventually owned several estates: Jervaulx Abbey, purchased in 1887 for £310,000, 11,000 acres in total; a portion of the Ackton Hall Estate, Featherstone (including a colliery), purchased in February, 1891, for the sum of £192,000 including 1216 acres and the Middleham Estate, including Middleham Castle, purchased for about £70,000 at the end of 1889. He bought extensive estates in the Punjab, Dehra Dun and Assam, India. He purchased Swinton Park in 1883 from George Danby Affleck, for £400,000. He spent £100,000 on further alterations, and then also purchased furniture and pictures for the interiors. Parts of the collections were dispersed in auctions: one on 13-16th May 1947 with Messrs. Hollis & Webb, and sporadically at Christie’s, London in October, November and December 1975.

Lister married in 1854, Anne, daughter of John Dearden, Esq., of the Hollins, Halifax, who prematurely died in March, 1875. He had two sons, namely, the Hon. Samuel Cunliffe (b.1857) and John Cunliffe (b.1867) who both, in due course, inherited his title. His daughters were: Annie Cunliffe, Mary Ewbank Cunliffe, Ada Cunliffe, Edith Cunliffe, and Evelyn Cunliffe. Created Lord Masham of Swinton on 15 July 1891, he died a few years later on 2 February 1906 at Swinton. Swinton Park remained in his family until 1980, when his grand-daughter Molly, wife of the 1st Earl of Swinton, died and the mansion was sold. In 2000, Her great-grandson Mark Cunliffe-Lister bought the house back, transforming it into a remarkable luxury hotel.