The Bute Epergne: A George II silver-gilt seven-basket "arbor" epergne, Thomas Heming, London, 1756

the six shell and scroll feet rising through foliate supports to an openwork trellis of grapevine crowned by a basket of fruit, pendant leaves on each side engraved with arms, enclosing a pierced and fluted basket, with six vine-form branches springing from the supports and supporting detachable leaf-shaped dishes, each resting on snail and caterpillar feet, with five grape cluster plugs for if the arms are not used.

John, 3^rd Earl of Bute (1713-1792), by descent to
John, 7th Marquess of Bute (succeeded 1993), sold
Christie's London, July 3, 1996, lot 79

James Lomax, "Royalty and Silver: the role of the Jewel House in the eighteenth century," The Silver Society Journal 11 (Autumn 1999), p. 36
London: The Queen's Gallery, 2004: George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, p. 319

one plug lacking, regilt, possibly lacquered, otherwise good condition, impressive scale and design
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This splendid centerpiece was made for one of the closest advisors to the young George III; Heming would be named Royal Goldsmith to the new reign, and repeated this design as the centerpiece of the King's Coronation Service.

THE EARL OF BUTE
John, 3^rd Earl of Bute (1713-1792) was the son of the 2^nd Earl and his wife Lady Anne Campbell, daughter of the 1^st Duke of Argyll.  Educated at Eton, in 1736 he married Mary, only daughter of Edward Wortley-Montagu, of Wortley, co. York, and his wife the famous writer Lady Mary.  In 1737 he was elected representative peer for Scotland, and in 1738 was knighted at Holyrood House.

In 1746 the Earl and Countess moved to London, where he came to the notice of  Frederick, Prince of Wales.  He was appointed Lord of the Bedchamber to the Prince in 1750, but the position disappeared on the Prince's sudden death in 1751.  Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales was close to the Earl and to his wife, with strong shared interests including gardening and the arts, and in 1756 Bute was named Groom of the Stole to the young Prince of Wales, soon to be George III.  His influence with the young prince was substantial, helping to develop both his personal philosophies and artistic tastes, with his charge referring to Bute as his "dearest friend."

When George II died in 1760, Bute was appointed Groom of the Stole for George III on the day of his accession and Secretary of State for the North – serving as de facto prime minister from the beginning, although the Duke of Newcastle was not formally dismissed until 1762.  Newcastle's replacement marked the end of the monopoly on the government the Whig party had held since 1714; it also marked probably the last time the monarch was able to remove a Prime Minister because of personal animosity.

Bute's rising fortunes allowed him greater opportunity for patronage, both personal and on behalf of his Royal charge.  He began commissioning significant plate from Thomas Heming, whom Bute would raise up with him.  Similarly Alan Ramsay, a fellow Scot, would be named Principal Painter to the King.  Johan Zoffany, whom Bute employed in 1763, would go on to do twenty-one Royal commissions, and Bute may have introduced cabinetmaker William Vile to the young monarchs.  The Earl engaged Richard Dalton to be the Prince's librarian, and on a trip to Italy he rapidly acquired 700 drawings for the Royal Collection.  In 1762 Bute's brother, envoy to Turin, negotiated the purchase of Consul Joseph Smith's collection of 500 paintings plus other artworks.  With all of this activity, the Earl reinvigorated Royal patronage and collecting from the slump it had succumbed to under the aging George II.

However, Bute's glory was to be short lived; opposition to the Peace of Paris in February, 1763, combined with animosity about his Scottish background and rumors of his relationship with the Dowager Princess of Wales to fuel a public outcry.  He resigned as Prime Minister in April, 1763 and fell quickly into political limbo without shedding popular opprobrium; by 1767 he was residing on the Continent for long stretches.  For the almost 30 years remaining of his life, the Earl would focus on his library, his picture collection, and his architectural patronage.  The Earl of Chesterfield remarked on the 3rd Earl, 'he had honour, honesty, and good intentions. He was too proud to be respectable or respected. Too cold and silent to be amiable, too cunning to have great ability, and his inexperience made him to precipitately undertake what it disabled him from executing.' 

THOMAS HEMING

The history of English silversmiths offers few more extreme examples of one artist being  "made" by a single important patron, and this epergne is Heming's earliest major work for the 3^rd Earl of Bute. 

Thomas Heming (1722-1801) was apprenticed in 1737 to Edmund Boddington but made over the same day to Peter Archambo, one of the most accomplished Huguenot goldsmiths.  He was made a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company in 1746 and registered his mark, giving an address in Piccadilly.  This already indicates an entrepreneurial spirit, to locate his establishment in the increasingly fashionable West End close to Burlington House and St. James Square, rather than the more established retail area of Leicester Square or the group of goldsmiths closer to St. Paul's, on streets such as the evocative Gutter Lane.  His documented work from the very late 1740s and early 1750s includes many chinoiserie tea caddies and rococo candlesticks.

A suggestion of greater things to come occurs in the suite of three cups and covers of 1752;[1] he would make seven other examples of these cups by 1761, including a pair for the Earl of Bute.  However, the Bute epergne of 1756, at 266 ounces, represents a new level of splendor for Heming.  Judging from lots in the 1996 Bute sale, the Earl had earlier been buying his plate from John Le Sage, Paul de Lamerie, Eliza Godfrey, Henry Dutton, and Samuel Herbert & Co.[2]  After this epergne, though, the Bute patronage is almost exclusively with Heming: a pair of cups and covers of 1757, two tureens of 1758, over 1200 ounces of second course dishes and meat platters in 1760,[3] figural candlesticks in 1766, and dinner plates in 1770.[4]

Heming was gaining more high-profile clients in the late 1750s, such as Assheton, 1^st Baron Curzon,[5] Other, 5^th Earl of Plymouth,[6] and the wealthy Sir George Warren.[7]  However, it was his appointment as Goldsmith to the new George III, after the old king's death on October 25, 1760, that dramatically changed his future.  The Master of the Jewel House at this time was Sir Richard Lyttleton; his brother Lord Lyttleton had been secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and was a close associate of the Earl of Bute, thus easing the advancement of the Earl's protégé.[8]  The appointment must have come as a shock and disappointment to John Parker and Edward Wakelin, who just two weeks before had taken over the King's Arms in Paton Street – with its history of supplying the Royal family – from its founder George Wickes.  Instead, it would be Heming's new King's Arms, on Bond Street by 1765, which would handle the coronation requirement of over £25,000 of plate and jewels, including £2,200 for new gilding almost 14,000 ounces of plate.[9] 

A series of Royal Warrants between July 1761, when the young King's betrothal to Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz was announced, and 25 March 1762 provided for a gilt toilet service for the new queen and an extensive dinner service including six tureens and 8 dozen plates: 9,900 ounces of gilt plate and 6,000 ounces of white plate, for a total cost of £8,783 6s 1d.  Further orders followed, such as all the officers in the new Royal Household, ambassadors such as the Earl of Buckinghamshire, and christening cups for Royal godchildren.  The Earl of Bute resigned as Prime Minister in 1763, but despite being his protégé Heming seems not to have been at all affected; that year saw him delivering plate for the Royal nursery, then in 1766 a toilet service for the king's sister, in 1770 Speaker's plate for Sir John Cust, in 1771 another toilet service for Queen Charlotte, in 1772 another gilt dinner service.[10]

Not until 1782 would Heming lose his position as Principal Goldsmith to the King, after an investigation into his charges during Burke's Economical Reform Act of 1762.[11]  The Royal Jewel House itself was suppressed as part of a "witch hunt" against expenditure, and the retailers Jones & Jeffries were able to underbid Heming when orders were put to tender.  Heming retired to Hillingdon, in considerable comfort, and in 1796 signed his will as "Thomas Heming, Esquire", indicating a distinct distancing from his mercantile  past.[12]

THE DESIGN

The first English version of an arbor centerpiece seems to be William Kent's design, published in 1744 by John Vardy.[13]  The following year the design was realized on an octagonal plan for Frederick, Prince of Wales by George Wickes.[14]  At almost the same time, Wickes refined Kent's somewhat unwieldy design into an elegant circular arbor on six supports, centered by a basket, as the centerpiece of his 1745-47 service for the Duke of Leinster.[15]

The Earl of Bute would probably have known the Kent-designed centerpiece from his close association with the Dowager Princess of Wales, but was this last incarnation that Thomas Heming adapted in 1756 for a centerpiece for the Earl.  The arbor and particularly the supports are almost identical to the Leinster piece of a decade before, suggesting that Heming had access to the models used in its production.  The models seem to have been in circulation, for ten years later yet another version would be produced by John Romer, probably for Parker & Wakelin, and supplied to the Rt. Hon. Thomas Conolly of Castletown, co. Kildare;[16] both Conolly and the Earl of Leinster married daughters of the 2^nd Duke of Richmond.

Heming loosened up the grapevine and lowered two large leaves to bear his patron's arms.  What really pulls the piece from the Baroque into the rococo, though, are the grapevine arms springing from the trellis structure, as though some gardener had been negligent.  These Heming topped with curved and jagged-edged leaf dishes, crawling with snails and catepillars and carefully matted on the bases – a more fully realized naturalism than the similar leaf-form dishes of the Burghley epergne of just the year before (lot 811).  The whole boccage creation becomes a celebration of verdant nature, particularly the fruit of the vine.  It has been suggested that the leaves are mulberry leaves, crawling with silkworms, and thus a reference to Virgil's "The Song of Silenus" in the sixth Eclogue, when Silenus is wrapped in vines and mulberries by the Sylvian farmers and the water nymph Aegle.[17]

In 1762, Heming made an exact replica of the Earl of Bute's centerpiece for George III.[18]  It formed the centerpiece of the "Coronation Service," the new king's almost 15,000 ounce overhaul of the royal dining plate, and confirms the almost imperial splendor of the Earl's original.  The king's version was commission 24 July 1761, when Bute was still very much in the ascendant, and invoiced in April of 1762 for £241 19s; the following month Bute became Prime Minister and a Knight of the Garter. 

The Royal epergne is one of the most direct examples of Bute's impact on the taste of the young George III, but it was also one of the last.  Less than a year after its delivery, Bute was out of office, and by 1765 the Earl had sold his Adam-designed London mansion – an acknowledgement that he was no longer a political force.

[1] Sotheby's New York, October 16, 1996, lot 303
[2] Christie's, July 3, 1996, lots 84-87, 89
[3] As Groom of the Stole, the Earl should have received a warrant for 1,000 ounces of plate on his appointment; normally this plate would be engraved with the Royal arms.  Nothing with the Royal arms seems to be recorded, though, and the Earl's purchases comprise an almost complete service, raising the question if this extensive commission the year of his appointment represents his allotment, just not with the Royal arms.
[4] Ibid., lots 77, 78, 81-83
[5] Four dishes of 1758, sold Christie's London, June 14, 2005, lot 181
[6] A cup and cover of 1758, sold Sotheby's London, November 20, 2003, lot 207
[7] See Christopher Hartop, The Huguenot Legacy: English Silver 1680-1760 from the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection, London: Thomas Heneage, 1996, no. 54, pp. 242-245.
[8] Lomax 1999, pp. 134, 138
[9] Helen Clifford, Silver in London: The Parker and Wakelin Partnership 1760-1776, p. 44
[10] London: The Queen's Gallery, 2004: George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, chapter 12
[11] Lomax 1999, p. 139
[12] Sophia Tobin "'These six sheets of paper' – Some biographical insights from the will of Thomas Heming," Silver Studies: The Journal of the Silver Society 26 (2010), p. 58
[13] There are earlier continental prototypes, such as Johann Ludwig II Biller's 1731-33 centerpiece to the "Riga Service," with caryatid supports lined by scrolls and floral garlands (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, see Silver und Gold: Augsburger Goldschmiedekunst für die Höfe Europas, no. 144).
[14] Royal Collection, illustrated Elaine Barr, George Wickes, Royal Goldsmith 1698-1761, fig. 106, p. 170
[15] Ibid., fig. 124, p. 204
[16] Sotheby's London, November 19, 1987, lot 96
[17] Note to Christie's offering of this piece in 1996
[18] Queen's Gallery 2004, no. 333, p. 321