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Teapot

Francis Crump

English, free 1741

Teapot

1772/73

Teapots were status symbols in eighteenth-century England, often made from precious materials and intricately decorated. The sides of this silver teapot are covered with narrative scenes, including an episode from “Cimon and Iphigenia,” a story from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron and a tale from the fables of Jean de La Fontaine. The scenes are minutely engraved onto the silver, with ornamental designs filling the remaining surfaces.

Medium silver and wood
Dimensions 4 3/8 x 7 5/16 x 3 13/16 in. (11.1 x 18.6 x 9.7 cm) Weight: 11.8 oz (334.4 g)
Object Number 1963.165
Acquisition Acquired by the Clark, 1963
Status On View

Image Caption

Francis Crump, Teapot, 1772/73, silver and wood. Clark Art Institute, Acquired by the Clark, 1963.165

Select Bibliography

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Thirty-five: Recent Silver Acquisitions. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1966. Wildenstein & Company. An Exhibition of Treasures from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts: Paintings, drawings & rare silver, for the benefit of the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, inc. (CRIA). Exhibition catalogue. New York: Wildenstein & Company, 1967. Langstaff, Bard, and James McConnaughy, eds. Fifty Years on 57th Street: An Exhibition of English, Irish, and American Silver Purchased and Sold by Our Firm over the Last Fifty Years. Exhibition catalogue. New York: S. J. Shrubsole Corp., 1986. Anonymous. "Acquisitions." Museum News 45, no. 3 (March 1967). Winchester, Alice. Editorial. Antiques 92 (Sept. 1967). Clayton, Michael. The Collector's Dictionary of the Silver and Gold of Great Britain and North America. London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group for Country Life, 1971. Oman, Charles. English Engraved Silver, 1150 to 1900. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978. Banister, Judith . "Silver for the Tea Table." Antique Dealer and Collectors Guide 37 (January 1984): 347. Anonymous. "Sample Searches, II: A Curator's Search for Information to Complete a Catalogue Entry." News from RILA 3 (February 1985). De Castres, Elizabeth. A Guide to Collecting Silver. London: Bloomsbury books in association with J. Goddard and Sons, 1985. Sotheby's. Fine English, Continental, and South American Silver. Auction catalogue. New York, 27 April 1990. Wees, Beth Carver. "English Silver in an American Museum: The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute." Silver Society Journal 4 (Autumn 1993):115–23. Wees, Beth Carver. English, Irish, and Scottish Silver at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1997. Wees, Beth Carver. "Silver in the Clark Art Institute." The Magazine Antiques 62, no. 4 (October 1997): 536–45. De Castres, Elizabeth. Collecting Silver. London: Bishopsgate Press, 1986.

Provenance

Sold Christie's, London, 5 February 1947, lot 152 (Property of a Gentleman); bought Kaye; Woolcombe-Boyce collection, sale Graves Son & Pilcher, Hove, 26 June 1963, lot 90; bought S. J. Shrubsole, Ltd., London; sold to Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, invoice dated 14 January 1964.

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