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wine coolers

Description
Each wine cooler has two handles and is of circular section on a spreading, shaped circular foot moulded with a band of gadroons. The body is of a modified inverted bell shape, embossed on the lower part with a band of gadroons and shellwork. The upper part of the body has an applied oval medallion of a seated putto, pendant swags of vines, and a reeded border overlaid with leaves. The handles are formed as poodles standing on their hind legs, each with one leg supported by an applied scroll-and-foliage bracket rising from the base.

Construction
The bodies are raised and the feet cast and soldered to the bases. The medallions and vine swags are cast and soldered to the body; the swags are also pinned through in several places, in some cases apparently as part of the original construction and in others because of minor repairs. The scroll brackets are soldered to the body and further secured by pins. The poodles are cast.

Commentary
The close association between eighteenth-century French and northern Italian decorative arts is very evident in the design of these wine coolers. Examples of comparable form and decoration may be found in both French porcelain and silver from the middle of the century-for instance, in a pair of Vincennes porcelain coolers of similar profile modelled by the Turin-born Jean-Claude Duplessis (d. 1774) now in the Musée National Adrien-Dubouché, Limoges. Closer still are a pair of silver coolers of 1744 by Thomas Germain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The latter are of the same shape, with similar fluted decoration, reed-and-tie borders, and handles in the form of poodles' heads. Other examples may be cited of mid-eighteenth-century French silver with similar applied decoration, and it is possible that the Gilbert Collection coolers are in fact copies of lost French originals.

Glossaries

gadroons - a series of convex curves often applied as a border decoration
embossed - the relief decoration of metals
putti - a representation of a small child, often naked and having wings; plurel, putto
reeding - thin, parallel, convex mouldings, often used for the ornamentation of a border
raised - formed from a single sheet of metal by repeated hammering over an anvil

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