Silver and Silver Filigree at Walpole's Houghton.
Silver Society Journal, 2013.
This article is included on the blog to illustrate how the terms for filigree can become confused.
Firstly the Silver Sconces of Silver Philegree - this seems unlikely to refer to silver wire objects
Secondly The large quantity in the case in the van Dyck Dressing Room "filled with a large Quantity of Silver Philegree, which belong’d to Catherine Lady Walpole".
This perhaps refers to silver filigree objects from a dressing set but this does not explain the different use of the term philegree.
Thirdly - the “Philligree Cabinet” referred to perhaps refers to the Pierre Gole Cabinet (illustrated below) but it is possible that it refers to another entirely different object.
Could it refer to a cabinet such as the Silver Gilt Khalili Collection Cabinet see -
https://antiqueeuropeanfiligree.blogspot.com/2023/01/spectacular-and-large-silver-gilt.html
This Khalili Silver Gilt Filigree cabinet has as yet no provenance - I am waiting to hear more. It has been posited that this cabinet was made in Goa, but it was most likely made in Holland by a craftsman from Augsburg or Nuremberg such as Hans Conraedt Breghtel in the Hague.
Page 24.................
Copied directly from an article by Christopher Hartop - my comments are in Italics.
Page 52, –
The only items of silver at Houghton to be mentioned in
Horace Walpole’s Aedes Walpoliana, the room-by-room catalogue he made of his
father’s pictures written in 1743 but first published in 1747, are two pairs of
silver sconces and articles of “silver Philegree”.
The sconces are listed in the Carlo Maratta Room (otherwise known as the Green Velvet Drawing Room): at each End are two sconces of Massive silver.
Note 156 - 156 Horace Walpole, Aedes Walpoldiana, 1767 ed, p 57.
The four sconces were included in the sale held by the 3rd
Earl’s executors in 1792 and do not appear to have survived. The fitting up of
the state rooms at Houghton was all but complete by 1731 and, if the sconces
were commissioned specifically for that room, it is most likely that they were
made in Paul de Lamerie’s workshop.
Listed as part of the second day’s sale, the sconces were catalogued as having “figures in Alto Relievo”.
Sconces of this type are often described
as ‘picture sconces’ in early eighteenth-century accounts and were usually chased
with mythological scenes.
The Houghton sconces were probably similar to the set of six
sconces commissioned by the 2nd Earl of Warrington in 1730–31.
Warrington’s have scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, fitting subjects for the bedchamber for which they were intended, reflecting the transitions from day to night, and the use of the toilet service.
Note 157 - 157. Two of the set are in the Sterling and
Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (Beth Carver Wees,
English, Irish & Scottish Silver at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
New York, 1997, pp 501–4, no 371); the other four are now back at Dunham Massey
(James Lomax and James Rothwell, Country House Silver from Dunham Massey, London,
2006, pp 105–8, no 46).
It is interesting to speculate what the subject matter of
Walpole’s sconces was and if they in some way reflected the subject matter of the
pictures that surrounded them. Note 158.
The “philegree” was in the Van Dyck Dressing Room: At the
upper end of this Room is a Glass Case filled with a large Quantity of Silver
Philegree, which belong’d to Catherine Lady Walpole.
Note 159. Horace Walpole, op cit, see note 156, 1752
and 1767 editions, p 62.
She had died in August 1737, and while much of her collection was sold at auction by Mr Cock in 1741 it would appear that after her death the filigree was taken to Houghton, which she had seldom, if ever, visited.
Note 160 - 160. The only copy of the sale catalogue appears to
be that preserved in the Saffron Walden Museum; I am grateful to Gemma Tully
for making it available to me. This catalogue includes no silver or filigree
items.
Catherine Walpole had continued to live at Orford House in Chelsea although for many years she and her husband had lived separate lives. She was an amateur artist and is known to have had a grotto in the garden at Chelsea in imitation of Queen Caroline’s. She collected sea shells and exotic birds, as well as filigree.
The seventeenth century had seen the appearance in Europe of items fashioned from twisted strips of silver or silver wire, brought from Asia and South America (where it was made by Chinese immigrants). The technique had spread to workshops in Portugal, Spain and Italy and by the reign of Louis XIV filigree items were being made in workshops set up by the king in the Louvre.
There is also evidence that filigree items were being made in England at that time. William III possessed a writing box made of filigree which was probably made in the Hague, while the Dutch court goldsmith Hans Coenraedt Breghtel incorporated panels of filigree into a monumental table clock now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
161 - Menshikova.
Any reference to excerpts from Menshikova should be treated with caution. Much written in this book is confused or wrong. The reference here to Silver filigree made in England could refer to the very fine cut silver work which could be mistaken for true silver wire filigree work.
By 1700 most courts in Europe possessed collections of
filigree although the only one to have survived in large part appears to be the
one in Russia. By the 1730s the fashion for collecting filigree items was
widespread in London.
Lady Walpole’s collection of filigree, comprising a “Philligree Cabinet” and stands for cups, small
baskets and various accoutrements of the dressing table, was itemised
separately in the 1745–46 and the post-1751 inventories (see Appendix 5). No
filigree items appear in the 1792 sale, nor does the collection appear in the
Strawberry Hill sale, so its subsequent fate is unknown.
Note 162 Horace Walpole had a few small items of
filigree which are listed in A Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole, 1774
(see Larissa Dukelskaya and Andrew Moore, op cit, see note 14, p 348, no 271)
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The filigree cabinet referred to here (Hartop) is almost certainly the cabinet attributed to Pierre Gole which is inlaid with Boulle style designs.
The filigree here was also variously described as philegree, philigrew, philigrey, filligreen.
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