Antique silver — the most interesting small collectibles in London

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A cast wine label with integral crest engraved for HOCK, by Isaac Cookson of Newcastle (d. 1754), crested for FENWICK .
Price: £975.00

This label is described as follows in Wine Labels 1730-2003 (2004)- p. 224:
"Mid-eighteenth century cast designs are rare [in Newcastle], but not unknown. Isaac Cookson made a version of the two putti design (see fig. 744 HOCK by Isaac Cookson circa 1745) incorporating, top centre, a crest of a phoenix in flames , 'murally gorged'. This is the crest of the Fenwick family , which had several branches in the surrounding counties of Northumberland and Durham. As with all armorial labels, these labels would have to have been made to a private commission and were probably in a set of six".

This label was exhbited at the Wine Label Circle in 2003 while the BURGUNDY from the set is mentioned in the Society's Journal in 1954, the CLARET in 1957. PORT, CHAMPAGNE and another (unspecified) were referred to in 1976.

A George III rectangular Britannia standard wine label with canted corners and a threaded border engraved for SHERRY, by George Knight London 1825.
Price: £750.00

This label is apparently the only recorded nineteenth century Britannia standard wine label (although a sauce label by William Knight of 1831 is recorded). The wine label is referred to in Wine Labels 1730-2003 on page 135 and has belonged to two prominent collectors. In 2013 this label was purchased by the late Tony Cowdry who annotated his copy of the book with this fact and prior to this it was part of Sir Thomas Barlow's collection.

A George III escutcheon-shaped wine label for CLARET, by Samuel Teare of Dublin circa 1755, initialled {BE}
Price: £495.00

A wine label for CALCAVELLA of similar shape and threaded border by this maker is in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland and is illustrated on page 129 of 500 years of Irish silver by Ida Delamer and Conor O'Brien (2005) as figure 23.23.

A George III wine label with engraved decoration imitating drapery engraved for PORT by Peter Ann and William Bateman London 1803, initialled {IHN} and dated 1804.

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In 1952 the Wine Label Circle defined this design as a rarity and in 1963 as elusive. At this point it was also noted that it appeared 'to be an original design of Peter and William Bateman'.

A George III shaped rectangular wine label with Feather-edged border engraved for MADEIRA, by Phipps and Phipps London 1820, crested for the Goldsmiths' Company. .
Price: £475.00

The Goldsmiths' Company of London received its Royal charter in 1327, making it the 5th Livery Company to be established. It oversees the hallmarking (a term derived from the marks being struck at Goldsmiths' Hall) of all items of precious metal marked in London.

The first labels of this design were commissioned by the Company from Margaret Binley in around 1770 and they continued to commission very similar labels until 1854. This label was one of six recorded in the catalogue of the Company silver (privately published in 1926) bought from Phipps and Phipps in 1820 (all for MADEIRA). In 1970 the Goldsmiths' Company sold 46 of the 96 labels they had purchased.

A crescent wine label engraved for PORT, Chester circa 1780 by Joseph Walley of Liverpool.
Price: £425.00

A pair of Victorian thread-edge wine labels engraved for MARASCHINO and CURACOA, by Yapp and Woodward Birmingham 1854 .
Price: £395.00

A George III wine label with feather-edge border and cartouche set below the name, engraved for CLARET, by Thomas Hyde London circa 1770, showing the crest of Charles Schaw Cathcart, 9th Baron Cathcart (1721-1776) .
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Charles Schaw Cathcart (1721-1776) served as a Lord of the Bedchamber to George II and A.D.C. to William, Duke of Cumberland at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. At Fontenoy, he received a wound on his cheek evident in all later portraits. In 1749, Cathcart was one of the officers sent to Paris in preparation for the peace treaty. In 1760 he was promoted to Lieutenant-general and, among many offices and accolades, he was made a Knight of the Thistle in 1763. He served as British ambassador to Russia from 1768-1771.

A George IV cast wine label with decorative border and integral cartouche engraved for MADEIRA, by Charles Reily and George Storer London 1829 engraved with the arms of Trinity Hall, Cambridge .
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Trinity Hall, Cambridge was founded in 1350 by Bishop Bateman of Norwich and is the 5th oldest college in the university. It was founded to foster the study of Civil and Canon Law (following the dearth of clergyman and lawyers after the plague outbreak of 1349) and occupies a site purchased from John De Craufurd, Prior of Ely, who had used it to house his monks during their studies at Cambridge. Notable Alumni include J. B. Priestley, Stephen Hawking and Nicholas Hytner.

A George III rectangular wine label with canted corners and a bright-cut border engraved for MADEIRA, by Robert Jones of Liverpool circa 1790 .
Price: £345.00

This label, or one very similar to it, is illustrated as label number 698 on page 202 of Wine Labels 1730-2003 (2003).

A George III wine label with thread-edge border engraved for WHITE WINE, by IW of Chester (John Walker of Chester or Joseph Walley of Liverpool) , c. 1800.
Price: £335.00

Labels by Joseph Walley of Liverpool (d. 1801) are recorded. If it is by him the shape would suggest that it was a late example of his work.

The other candidate for this mark is John Walker of Chester. He was the son of George Walker I of Chester and was born in 1782. John was made a member of the Goldsmiths' Company of Chester in 1808, having been apprenticed to his father, and succeeded his father as Assay Master on the latters death in 1809 (although he did not swear the oath of that office until 1819). In 1825 Walker described himself as Secretary (as well as Assay Master) and in 1834 he was admitted to the Company again 'according to ancient use and custom'.

In 1840 he appears to have ceased his activities with the Goldsmiths' Company of Chester in the wider disgrace of his family. It certainly seems dubious for the son of the Assay Master (if this label were 1808-1809) or the Assay Master himself, if this label were made after 1809, to be avoiding assaying charges. John Walker is only known to have assayed four labels in his career and the whereabouts of these are currently unknown.

A George III crescent shaped wine label with beaded borders engraved MADERE, unmarked circa 1780 .
Price: £325.00

According to the Journal of the Wine Label Circle (founded 1952) this unusual variant of the name Madeira appears to be unrecorded on silver labels- apparently only on ceramic examples.

A George III embossed rococo wine label engraved MADEIRA, unmarked second half of the 18th century, crested for Dunlop of Garnkirk.
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The Dunlop family is recorded in Ayrshire from the 11th century but acquired the property at Garnkirk in 1634. There are three possible heads of the branch of the Dunlop family of Garnkirk and Dunlop owners of Garnkirk in the second half of the eighteenth century. James Dunlop IV of Garnkirk was a prominent citizen of Glasgow and a partner in the family firm of tobacco importers trading with Virginia. When he died in 1769 he left a male line in America , including James (1793-1872) who rose to be a prominent Judge but the family estate was sold in 1782 to his nephew- another James. This James (1742-1816) was also a partner in the tobacco trade with Virginia but the firm was caught up in the financial instability of the early 1790s and failed (although the family remained prominent in the South West of Scotland and provided an MP for Glasgow in the 1830s).

An oval reeded wine label engraved for SHERRY, by Williams Brothers Exeter 1853
Price: £295.00

This label was once part of the Warde-Aldam family silver at Hooton Pagnell, Yorkshire. It is one of only 33 assayed by the Williams Brothers at Exeter and must be one of the earliest of their labels assayed there -- Exeter Assay Office records only show their labels from 1854 onwards.

A wine label with threaded border pierced for CHAMPAGNE, by Thomas Phipps and Edward Robinson London 1806.
Price: £295.00

A thread-edged wine label pierced for NOYAU, by Phipps and Robinson London 1806 .
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Noyau, as well as being the name of a town in Picardy and on Haiti, is a French liqueur made from brandy and flavoured with almonds and the pits of apricots. 'Noyau de la Martinique' is mentioned in the London Public Advertiser on 11th May 1775.

A small bottle stand mounted on a wooden base, by Robert Hennell London 1832, crested for the GORDON family, baronets of Niton.
Price: £275.00

Sir James Willoughby Gordon (1772-1851) became Quartermaster General under the Duke of Wellington in 1812 and held the post until 1851, as well as being MP for Launceston 1829-1831.

A Victorian escutcheon shaped wine label with the background of the letters pierced out for MADEIRA, by Charles Rawlings and William Summers London 1853 .
Price: £265.00

A Victorian wine label with threaded border engraved MADEIRA, Rawlings and Summers London 1837, crested for Philip Yorke Gore, 4th Earl of Arran (1801-1884) .
Price: £245.00

Philip Yorke Gore (1801-1884) inherited the Earldom of Arran from his uncle in 1837. Prior to this point he had a diplomatic career starting with his appointment as Attache to the British legation in Stockholm before being transferred to Paris in 1825 and Lisbon in 1826. From 1827-1837 Gore was Secretary to the Legation in Buenos Aires (where he was also Charge D'Affaires from 1832-1834). In 1838 Gore, now Earl of Arran, married Elizabeth Napier (d. 1899). Elizabeth was the daughter of the historian of the Peninsular war General Sir Francis Napier (1785-1860) and had the second Duke of Richmond as both her maternal and paternal grandfather (making her also a great, great grand daughter of Charles II).

A George III wine label engraved for PORT with chased border, by Barber and Whitwell York circa 1820 .
Price: £245.00

A small number of labels in this design are recorded (see figure 762 in 'Wine Labels 1730-2003') and another PORT formed part of lot 166 in the Woolley and Wallis silver sale on 16th April 2019). On 30th May 1820, the York Assay Office book records Barber and Whitwell submitting wine labels (among other things) but they were detailed as: '6 Chased labels [and] 24 Shelled labels'. One might suggest that this label is one of the ' 6 Chased' examples.

An Old Sheffield Plate wine coaster with japanned base and border pierced with Prince of Wales Feathers, circa 1790 .
Price: £240.00

A coaster of very similar design to the body of this one can be seen in figure 334a of Gordon Crosskey's Old Sheffield Plate: A history of the 18th century plated trade (2011). The japanned base, described as 'very rare' on page 280 of that book, a set with these bases shown in figure 333.

A George V rectangular wine label with threaded border and integral cartouche engraved for BRANDY, by Levi and Salaman Birmingham 1911 (Britannia standard), crested with a hand holding a dagger .
Price: £225.00

It is rare to find wine labels made in Britannia standard silver (95.8% silver as opposed to Sterling which is 92.5%). The higher standard was compulsory from 1697-1720 and remained an option after that. The authors of Wine Labels 1730-2003 were only able to find two nineteenth century examples assayed in London (one wine label and one sauce label). In the late nineteenth century there was a resurgence of interest in the use of this standard but the majority of pieces seen bear London hallmarks.

A boudoir label engraved GLYCERINE, by William Jones London 1859 .
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A pair of George III Old Sheffield Plate wine coasters with pierced borders and applied rococo cartouches, circa 1780. The cartouches carry the crest and coronet of Thomas Tracy, 6th Viscount Tracy (1719-1792) .
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The Tracy family received the Viscountcy of Tracy of Rathcoole in 1643 for their support of Charles I in the English Civil Wars. When the 5th Vicount died he was succeeded by three of his sons in turn (all of whom died without heirs to the title).
Thomas Charles, 6th Viscount (1719-1792) held the title from 1756 until 1792 and was succeeded by his younger half brother. The 7th Viscount, formerly the Hon. Dr. John Tracy (1722-1793), survived his brother by only a year (the 7th Viscount was also Warden of All Souls, Oxford from 1766 until his death). Finally their youngest brother, the Hon. Henry Tracy (1733-1797) became 8th Viscount and when he died in 1797 the title became dormant (although there were several claims to revive it in the nineteenth century).

A George III wine label with shell and scroll border pierced for SHERRY, by John Reily London 1816, crested for Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773-1840).
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Henry Fox (later Vassall-Fox) (1773-1840), was 3rd Baron Holland from 1774. He was descended from Charles II (via the Dukes of Richmond) and inherited his title when just over a year old. His was a strongly Whig family with his uncle being the orator Charles James Fox. Baron Holland himself was described as 'rather the Whig party itself than its leader'. As a result of his firmly held Whig principles, Holland held few Government offices — he served as Lord Privy Seal in the brief 'Ministry of All The Talents' that followed the death of William Pitt the Younger in 1806, and then as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1830-1834 and 1835-1840. In 1797 he married the recently divorced Elizabeth, Lady Webster, daughter of Richard Vassall of Jamaica (after paying £6000 in damages to Webster for 'criminal conversation' with his wife, which led to the birth of the future archaeologist (and General) Charles Richard Fox).

A Victorian wine label in the form of a Gothic letter P (for PORT), by Marshall and Sons Edinburgh circa 1860 .
Price: £170.00

It is interesting to note that Silver Plated labels were also produced inthis design - an example of which is our stock number 6508.

A rectangular label with cut corners engraved BRANDY by Joseph Angell, London 1813.
Price: £120.00

A George III hump-top wine label, pierced as a sunburst and engraved for PORT, unmarked circa 1790 .
Price: £110.00

This label is illustrated in Wine Labels 1730-2003 (ed. John Salter, 2004) as figure 155 on p. 52.