A pair of French post-Palissy pottery salt-cellars, circa 1600-1650

Possibly, Thomas Hope (1769-1831), Deepdene, Surrey and London;

Henry Thomas Hope Esq. (1808-1862), Deepdene, Surrey and London;

his widow, Mrs Adele Hope [née Bichat] (d. 1884) (according to one paper label to interior inscribed ‘on loan from Mrs H. J.[T?] Hope / July 1 1868’);

Probably, by descent to their daughter Henrietta Adela Hope (1843-1913), who in 1861 married Henry Pelham-Clinton (1834-1879), the Earl of Lincoln, later 6th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme;

Henry Pelham Archibald Douglas Pelham-Clinton (1864-1928), 7th Duke of Newcastle-Under-Lyme;

The Property of His Grace The Duke of Newcastle and removed from Clumber Worksop, sale, Christie's London, 7 July 1921, lot 132 (for 240 guineas to ‘Awa’);

George Alexander Lockett (1855-1923) of 58 Princes Gate, London, SW7 and then by descent to his wife Emma Lockett (1868-1941);

George A. Lockett, dec'd; sale, Christie’s London, 11-12 June 1942, lot 220, (£105 to Caelman);

With Alfred Spero, London;

With Cyril Humphris, London;

Arthur M. Sackler (1913-1987), New York,

His sale (Part 2), Christie’s New York, 1 June 1994, lot 55;

Where acquired

London, South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum), July 1862, nos. 1231 and 1232, lent by Henry Thomas Hope Esq.;

London, South Kensington Museum, July 1868, lent by Mrs H. T. Hope;

London, The Wallace Collection, 2006

J. C. Robinson (ed.), Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods, on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862, exh. cat., London 1863 (revised edition), p. 111, nos. 1231-1232;

Country Life, Issue no. 610, 12 September 1908, p. 353, seen in-situ in a display cabinet in the Saloon of Clumber, Nottinghamshire

The first confirmed owner of the present pair of salts was Henry Thomas Hope (1808-1862), a member of the wealthy banking family, who inherited a great fortune from his uncle and father as well as collections of works of art including the famous blue ‘Hope’ Diamond. Just before he died, Hope lent forty works of principally Renaissance art to the South Kensington Museum loan exhibition of 1862, a monumental exhibit which included over 9,000 objects. His loans, many of which are traceable to museum collections today, comprised three pieces of maiolica, including the Castel Durante bowl dated 1508 painted with the arms of Pope Julius II and the Manzoli of Bologna, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; a collection of Renaissance jewels and hardstones; one piece of ‘Henri Deux Ware’ - a Saint-Porchaire vessel - now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, as well as later pieces including a Wedgwood first edition copy of the Portland vase, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

When the 7th Duke of Newcastle sold these salts in 1921, the auction catalogue stated that the pieces were: ‘Formerly part of the celebrated Hope Collection, formed about the end of the 18th Century by Thomas Hope, Esq. …’. It is not yet possible to prove that the present salts were an acquisition of Thomas Hope, we only know that his son Henry owned them when they were loaned to the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum). The salts were lent again to the museum six years later by his widow, Adele Hope: ‘Another case contains a valuable collection of objects, chiefly Renaissance Art, lent by Mrs H. T. Hope, including two specimens of Henri Deux Ware, one a small Ewer of late date, showing an approximation to the characteristics of Palissy Ware, the other a fragment of a large and very fine ewer; also some remarkable pieces of Maiolica and Palissy Ware, and later painted Enamels of Limoges’, (A guide to the art collections of the South Kensington Museum, London July 1868, p. 16).

Recorded examples

Only two other examples of this model are recorded in the literature, differing only by having a slightly taller foot. One was in the historic Rothschild collection, previously owned by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905) and Baron Édouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), illustrated in G. De Rothschild, and S. Grandjean, Bernard Palissy et son école (Collection Édouard de Rothschild), Paris, 1952, cat no. XXXIV, pl. 35. It sold at Christie’s New York, 17 October 2023, lot 510 (together with another of a different architectural design). The second example belonged to Frédéric Spitzer (1815-1890), sold, Paris, Me Paul Chevalier, 17 April-16 June 1893, lot 634 (for 7,000 francs).

A salt of architectural form with herms of satyrs was, by 1862, in the collection of Comte Alexander Petrovich Basilevsky (1829-1899), illustrated in A. Sauzay, et. al, Monographie de l'oeuvre de Bernard Palissy suivie d'un choix de ses continuateurs ou imitateurs, Paris, 1862. That example is now in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, mus. no. Ф-464.

The significance of the incised BC monogram on the present salts has not yet been deciphered, but as the monograms are filled with glaze they must have been incised at the time of production.