Boxed Silver Tea Equippage Set with Acorn-bowled Teaspoons, c.1750
£1,450.00
Teaspoons (6) & Tongs (boxed) - Fancy Front/Picture Back with Acorn Bowls - London circa 1750 by Elizabeth Oldfield - 10.7cm long; 118g combined weight (Box = 17cm x 6.3cm) - WP/6785
This is a fabulous Georgian silver tea equippage set comprising six silver teaspoons complete with original tea tongs and presented in their original case.
The silver teaspoons are beautifully decorated to the front with rococo shell and foliate decoration and to the reverse of the bowls with a basket of flowers. The reverse terminals bear original engraved initials in the form of a complex cipher. The tea tongs (aka sugar nips) are also decorated with the basket of flowers and matching cipher. In addition, Apollo holding a bow is depicted to the hinge plate This is a high quality set that would originally have been bought together and the presence of the original shagreen covered case with green velvet lining is a further major bonus.
Spoons with acorn-shaped bowls are very rare and believed to have a political meaning related to the Jacobites - a reminder of the Boscobel Oak in which Charles II hid during the Civil War but also the oak being the symbol of the Stuarts. The acorn-shaped bowls of this set are superb and further mimicked in the shape of the tea tongs bowls too (especially rare!).
The teaspoons in this set were made by the lady silversmith Elizabeth Oldfield and although the marks are pinched and tricky to read, the maker's mark is clear legible to one spoon. Meanwhile, the tongs are marked for the specialist maker Henry Plumpton. Dating the set is failry straightforward as typically they were made circa 1750 and this works in perfectly with the working periods of Elizabeth Oldfield (1750 - c1755) and Henry Plumpton (c1740 - c1773).
The condition of the silver is superb throughout with crisp detailing, the spoons retaining their original bowl rims and neither damage nor repair to the tongs. As one might expect, the case is a little warped and one of the fastening clasps has broken.
Provenance: This set is illustrated on the back cover of "Eighteenth Century Silver Tea Tongs" by David Schlosberg and further discussed and illustrated on page 147.
