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This year the Gilbert’s spectacular silver soup tureens made by the great regency silversmith Paul Storr, celebrate their bicentenary. Storr worked for the successful royal goldsmiths Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, and was most likely influenced by French work among the royal plate, as well as the fashion for Egyptian motifs after Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile, and fashionable neo-classical engravings Their first owner, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland the fifth son of George III, is now best remembered for having succeeded to the throne of Hanover (Germany) in 1837 because his niece Queen Victoria was barred under the Salic Law, which prohibited females and descendants in the female line from inheriting land, titles, and offices. He had pursued a successful military career, becoming a Field Marshal in 1813. Although in politics he was staunchly Tory - making him extremely unpopular with the Whig politicians of his day - he proved an effective and conscientious king of Hanover, introducing modern sanitation and gas lighting amongst other improvements. He also encouraged railways, making Hanover a major junction. Like his brothers, the Prince Regent and the Duke of York, Cumberland had a taste for very grand silver and appreciated the genius for creating opulent pieces of the silversmith Paul Storr who worked for the fashionable royal goldsmiths Rundell, Bridge and Rundell. Cumberland as a soldier would have been well aware of Napoleon's Egyptian military exploits and his support for the excavation of ancient Egyptian sites and for publications on Egyptian art and architecture. Perhaps for this reason he chose a design that incorporated prominently Egyptian motifs such as the winged head in an Egyptian headdress. Like most of his contemporaries Cumberland had no problem with a mixture of styles from different cultures. The handles here, for instance, are based on the winged and many-breasted statue of the goddess Artemis, a celebrated antique classical figure that stood in the famous temple dedicated to her at Ephesus. Perhaps Cumberland and Storr felt that Artemis - famed for her skills as a huntress - was appropriate for tureens that very likely were used for game soup. A measure of the change of design that had taken place in less than fifty years can be gauged by comparing these architectural tureens with the Dutch curvilinear rococo soup tureen of 1764 in a nearby case with its naturalistically modelled dead game and artichoke knob - suitable raw materials for soup making. How often these tureens were used is not known. Their excellent condition suggests that they were used for soup only on very grand occasions, being otherwise on display to underline the status, taste and wealth of their owner. More about the soup tureens
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