A Victorian silver soup tureen, cover and liner, R. & S. Garrard & Co, London, 1860

shaped oval, the cover with detachable crest finial in the form of a bird, interlacing bead border on base and vine handles, liner with scroll handles, raised on four heavy leaf-capped scroll feet, underside stamped R & S GARRARD PANTON ST LONDON

The arms are those of Sir Thomas Brassey (1836-1918), Baron Brassey of Bulkeley, son of Thomas Brassey (1805-1870), the noted railway contractor, and his wife, Maria Farringdon Harrison (d. 1877). Following his education at Rugby and University College, Oxford, he was elected Liberal MP for Hastings in 1868. He became a Lord of the Admiralty in 1880, was knighted the following year and became Secretary to the Admiralty in 1884. Two years later he was created Baron Brassy of Bulkeley and between 1895 and 1900 he was Governor of Victoria, Australia. He was finally created Earl Brassey in 1911 and died at the age of 82 in 1918.

Brassey's first wife, whom he married in 1860 at St. George's, Hanover Square, was Anna (Annie), the daughter of John Allnutt. She wrote the bestseller, The Voyage of the Sunbeam, an account of the couple's eleven month circumnavigation in a steam-assisted schooner of that name, first published in 1878. Following her death in 1887 he married Lady Sybil de Vere Capell, daughter of Lt. Col. Arthur de Vere Capell, Viscount Malden, at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, in 1890.

A small collection of Brassey family silver, including several other examples from R. & S. Garrard & Co, were sold at Sotheby's Belgravia on 15 November 1973.