A fine silver-gilt mounted mother of pearl quaich, unmarked, English or Scottish, circa 1690

the bowl of curved mother of pearl panels, the mounts finely engraved with rosettes and borders of dots and stylized foliage

Philippa Glanville’s essay, ‘Mother-of-Pearl’ (Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1990, pp. 319-321), provides a brief but fascinating survey on the appeal of mother of pearl among goldsmiths’ wealthy patrons of the 16^th and 17^thCenturies. As she says, the ‘beauty and costliness’ of the material chimed perfectly with ‘the Renaissance taste for combining natural and artificial wonders.’ It was a taste that maintained its popularity over many years, as surviving examples testify, from the important to the relatively modest.

Early English examples include a silver-gilt mounted cup and cover, maker’s mark RW, London, 1590 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession no. 68.141.120a, b). In 1649 there were ‘six Fruit dishes of Mother of Pearle garnished about with silver gilt’ and ‘Six rich casting bottles of silver gilt, and richly garnished with mother of pearle’ in the Tower of London (The Society of Antiquaries of London, Archaeologia, ‘An Inventory and Appraisement of the Plate in the lower Jewel House of the Tower, Anno, 1649,’ London, 1851, p. 275). We can also be in no doubt that mother of pearl continued its appeal long after the middle of the 17^th Century. Among the hundreds of articles of mother of pearl jewellery and silver and mother of pearl snuff boxes which were reported to have been lost or stolen well into the 18^th Century, we find a number of other cherished objects in these valuable materials. In 1687, for instance, a certain Richard Anis made away from Greenwich with some of his master’s goods including ‘a Mother of Pearl Spoon, the handle Silver Gilt, the fashion a Horses Leg’ (The London Gazette, London, 15-18 August 1687, p. 2b); and in 1709 John Williams, a boy servant, disappeared from his employer’s house on Great Tower Hill with ‘a Pearl Cup with a Silver Foot and a Silver Handles [sic], and a Silver Rim’ (The Post Man and the Historical Account, London, 14-16 April 1709, p. 2a)

The use of exotic mother of pearl panels (probably imported from Gujarat) is only one of the interesting features of this intriguing quaich. Its shape, based like all quaichs on traditional Scottish wood examples, does not differ from the many silver examples which have been made in Edinburgh, Inverness, Aberdeen and other centres since the middle of the 17^th Century. Unlike most of these quaichs, however, the engraving on this present example is superb. This applies particularly to the rosettes, one on the underside, the other on the interior of the bowl, and to the dot decoration which borders the handles, as well as the finish of the blow-holes on the underside of the handles. The quality of this work suggests, first, an engraver of more than ordinary skill, and, second, an engraver who must have been familiar with the best source material, such as that of Simon Gribelin (1661-1733), the French artist who settled in London about 1680 .

Another distinctive feature in the scheme of this quaich is the attractive shaping of the nut at the centre of the lower rosette. This refinement and the excellence of the engraving point to Huguenot craftsmanship. It is thought that whoever was responsible for the manufacture of this most unusual quaich may well have been a London silversmith whose customer was not only Scottish but a Scotsman who had a more than passing knowledge of the trade with India and the East India Company.