With inscription, “William Simpson His Cup 1685.”
The glass-blower of Stuart days, a craftsman in metal, and the silver worker meet at this point, and the bead-like ornament is derivative from this old form. It is shown in simpler style in the Charles II porringer of 1672 (illustrated [p. 209]), and in more elaborate development in the James II posset-pot. The former is nearer to nature, and possibly nearer to the glass-worker.
The potter has similarly twisted his clay with equal swiftness and ease into convolutions similar to the glass-blower’s technique, but he has gone away from the original. With an elaboration far and above the three bends he has given to his plastic body in his handle, the German glass-blower has essayed to improve on this form, according to his lights; the result is that some of the German glass consists mainly in a fine elaboration of handle.
In regard to the evolution of design, something should be said of the Exeter piece with the hall-mark of that city, 1707, straight from the days of Queen Anne. The maker of this piece was Edmund Richards. Did he know that in his crane-head handle he was perpetuating something that was to live to the twentieth century? To-day modern Japan has run the crane to death. In textiles and in metal-work the design of the crane appears again and again. It is found in scissors; we have before us an elaborate pair, made for the Great Exhibition in 1851, with crane handles, elaborately finished and gilded.
Our last illustration terminates the history of the silver vessel intended for use for posset, or caudle, or porridge, or broth. The bowl ([p. 217]), or, as it is termed in the old inventory which has come down with the piece, a “Plum Broth Dish,” dates from 1697, the year of the Treaty of Ryswick, when Louis XIV recognized William III as King of Great Britain and Ireland. The maker is John Bodington.
Prior to Queen Anne, this example shows all the reticence of design usually associated with the Queen Anne style. It begins a new area. The posset-pot and the silver porringer were dying or dead; the days of the punch-bowl, the tureen, and all the intricacies of the modern silver vessel for tea, for coffee, for soup, and fitted for the complexities of a more modern life, were at hand.
PLUM BROTH DISH AND LADLE. WILLIAM III. 1697.
Maker John Bodington. (Marks illustrated.)