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cup and cover

Description
The two-handled cup stands on a domed foot and is of slightly waisted profile. The foot is embossed with lion masks, flowers, scrolls, and shells on punched matted ground; the compressed spherical knop above is chased with ovals and shells. The body of the cup is chased with two panels of revelling putti within elaborate surrounds of scrolls, vines, masks, and flowers; the handles are formed as vines. The cover is domed in two stages; it has decoration similar to that of the body and a finial in the form of a bunch of grapes surmounted by a lizard.

Construction
The foot, bowl, and cover are all raised. The ornament on the body and cover is mainly chased, with cast and applied areas of high relief, such as the putti, bunches of grapes, and some of the scrolls; in some cases these appear to be pinned as well as soldered to the surface. The handles and finial are cast, but the cast elements have been so thoroughly worked over with chasing that it is often impossible to be certain where the casting ends and the chasing begins.

Commentary
Described by P A S Phillips as "a piece of the highest decorative effect . . . equally distinguished in imagination and quality of design and in perfection of execution," this cup, together with the ewer and dish by the same maker is the ne plus ultra of the English rococo. While its density of ornament is not to everyone's taste, the design is undeniably one of the most dramatic and ambitious of de Lamerie's oeuvre and represents the logical conclusion of the development of his personal style. As such, it embodies both his strengths and weaknesses as a designer. The decoration is brilliantly conceived and executed, but it is applied to a form that, stripped of its ornament, reveals little sense of proportion.

Several similar cups are known: in particular, an almost identical example of 1742 in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, and another of the same year in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. These differ only in the smallest details of chasing. A pair of 1742 made for the sixth earl of Mountrath, now in the Dallas Museum of Art, should also be mentioned; these are of identical form but are modelled with the earl's coat of arms, as on the Gilbert Collection ewer and dish, and with a leopard in a landscape on the reverse.

An additional group of related cups from the late 1730s is of identical form but decorated differently, with snake handles, auricular masks, and panels of strapwork and ovolo ornament. These include two cups of 1737, one in the Fishmongers' Company collection, London, and the other in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, and a third cup of 1739, formerly in the collection of Earl Cowper.

De Lamerie, or his modeller, was clearly drawing on a wide range of sources for these designs. Philippa Glanville notes in respect to the Metropolitan Museum's cup that "the vine handles are to a design by Thomas Germain, found on a pair of ice-buckets". The snake handles and auricular masks on the related group of cups draw on early seventeenth- century Dutch tradition, and a ewer in the Provinciaal Museum Sterckshof, Deurne, Belgium, dating about 1656 is worthy of note for its similarly mannerist use of entwined snakes passing through the body of the vessel.

Glossaries

emboss - mould or carve in relief, decorate with a raised design
knop - a small decorative knob or boss
chase - to decorate a metal surface using a hammer and sharp tool
putti - a representation of a small child, often naked and having wings
raised - formed from a single sheet of metal by repeated hammering over an anvil

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