The Cream-pail
Taller vessels with a handle are usually termed cream-pails, though some collectors believe they were used for sugar. As they are of cut work they must have been used with a glass liner. They present some beautiful forms still clinging to classic ornamentation in combination with whatever new forms the craftsman could invent in conjunction with a severe style. The two illustrated ([p. 285]) show slightly differing intentions. The first on the right, with the London hall-marks for 1776, with its undulating top is in keeping with the wavy rims of the salt cellars of the same period, of French influence. The festoon of drapery with rosettes is in classic style and the foot and lower body has the traditional acanthus-leaf decoration. The handle and broad cut pattern ornamenting the body may be compared with the Irish example (illustrated [p. 343]), made in 1770.
BREAD-BASKETS WITH HANDLES. LONDON, 1745-1775.
Wire and sheet silver with cast and chased ornament.
(By courtesy of Messrs. Crichton Brothers.)
The other example on the same page ([p. 285]) is in date 1782, the year when, after three years’ siege of Gibraltar, the French and Spanish made a supreme effort by sea and land to win the key of the Mediterranean, but were beaten with heavy loss by General Eliot. The festoons and the vase in panel are now in incised decoration and are subservient. The style begins to break away from traditional severities and establish something original and as reticent as the classical forms without being so coldly formal and unnational.