A Guild of Handicraft Ltd silver mounted decanter designed b...

Estimate

£1,200 - £1,800

A Guild of Handicraft Ltd silver mounted decanter designed by Charles Robert Ashbee, the Whitefriars green glass of ovoid form with slender, tapering neck mounted with hinged collar and cover, with sweeping sinuous handle and hinged brace, the cover mounted with cabochon inset scrolling finial London 1993, 18cm deep, 23cm high
Literature: An identical decanter is illustrated: Alan Crawford, C.R. Ashbee Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist, London, 1985, p. 331, fig. 166. Crawford recounts Ashbee's interest in three broken, bulbous bottles of green glass, unearthed in the course of the clearing of the building site for the Magpie and Stump in 1893. In his romantic enthusiasm for the archaeology of the Chelsea area he kept the bottles, noting 'it was doubtless bottles of that shape....good solid glass, from which Falstaff and his worthies drank their sack'. Four years later, James Powell and Sons produced more refined versions of the bottles in thinner glass which Ashbee then cased in silver. At the time of production, the cost of these pieces was a mere GB3 or GB4 owing to the small amount of silver involved.

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A Guild of Handicraft Ltd silver mounted decanter designed by Charles Robert Ashbee, the Whitefriars green glass of ovoid form with slender, tapering neck mounted with hinged collar and cover, with sweeping sinuous handle and hinged brace, the cover mounted with cabochon inset scrolling finial London 1993, 18cm deep, 23cm high
Literature: An identical decanter is illustrated: Alan Crawford, C.R. Ashbee Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist, London, 1985, p. 331, fig. 166. Crawford recounts Ashbee's interest in three broken, bulbous bottles of green glass, unearthed in the course of the clearing of the building site for the Magpie and Stump in 1893. In his romantic enthusiasm for the archaeology of the Chelsea area he kept the bottles, noting 'it was doubtless bottles of that shape....good solid glass, from which Falstaff and his worthies drank their sack'. Four years later, James Powell and Sons produced more refined versions of the bottles in thinner glass which Ashbee then cased in silver. At the time of production, the cost of these pieces was a mere GB3 or GB4 owing to the small amount of silver involved.
Very good condition, silver a little tarnished but no real faults noted.