A Victorian Classical Style Silver-Gilt Ewer

A extremely fine and beautiful Victorian silver-gilt ewer by Hunt and Roskell, stamped on the base Hunt & Roskell Late Storr &Mortimer and numbered 8709, with a shaped rim and spout and serpentine handle with acanthus leaves at its top and applied vine leaves at its base, the jug with an elongated neck, decorated above by a band of rosettes and below by Vitruvian scroll banding, in between which is a plain ribbon-tied medallion on either side set against Bacchanalian trophies to include a thyrsus, pipes and other instruments. The main ovoid body, headed by a band of entwined vines, featuring a Bacchanalian procession, after the Borghese Vase, to include Bacchus with a thyrsus and draped in a panther skin, the figure of Bacchus with his wife Ariadne who plays a lyre, the figure of a Satyr and another of Bacchus supporting an elderly drunken Silenus reaching for a spilled wine cup, accompanied by various Maenads and male revellers playing castanets, a tambourine and panpipes, the main body on a tapering stem on a circular stepped foot. Fully hallmarked
London, dated 1884
Height 38.5 cm.
Weight 1070 gm.
Literature: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, “Vasi, candelabra, cippi, sarcophagi, tripodi, Lucerne, ed ornamenti disegnati ed incise dal Cav. Gio. Batt. Piranesi publicati I, anno MDCCLXXIIX”, 1778, pls. 109-110, illustrating the same Bacchanalian procession as here and on the Borghese Vase, as well as a reproduction of the original Borghese Vase.
A visitor to Hunt and Roskell’s workshop in Harrison Street, London described the firm as “ranking as the very highest of the class - not alone for the beauty of their workmanship, but for the exquisitely artistic taste, as well as for the consummate care and thoughtfulness displayed in their designs”, (“Trades and Manufacturies of Great Britain”, 1865). For most of the nineteenth century Hunt and Roskell ranked as London’s leading silver and jewellery manufacturer, rivalled only by R. and S. Garrard and Co. and C. F. Hancock. Hunt and Roskell produced high-class domestic silver and like Garrards, they specialized in massive sculptural trophies, centrepieces and presentation plate. The firm was founded by the celebrated goldsmith Paul Storr (1771-1844), who on dissolving his partnership with Rundell, Bridge & Rundell in 1819 set up his own workshop in Harrison Street, assisted by his nephew John Samuel Hunt (d.1865). In 1822 Storr entered partnership with John Mortimer trading under the name of Storr & Mortimer (1822-38). The latter ran the retail business from Bond Street while Storr continued to look after the manufacturing side with J. S. Hunt as a partner.
On Storr’s retirement in 1838 John Samuel’s son, John Hunt (c. 1811-79) joined the partnership, and the firm was renamed Mortimer and Hunt (1838-43). When Mortimer retired in 1843 the Hunts took Robert Roskell (d. 1888), formerly a watchmaker and merchant from Liverpool, and C. F. Hancock (who left in 1849) into partnership and were known, from 1843-97, as Hunt and Roskell. After John Hunt’s death in 1879 his son, John Mortimer Hunt as well as Robert Roskell and his son Allan ran the firm. In 1889 Alfred Benson purchased the business, which became a Limited Company in 1897 and was known as Hunt and Roskell Ltd. until about 1965.
In many ways Hunt and Roskell were similar to Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, firstly in their use of naturalistic ornament and secondly in their creation of elaborate sculptural silver. During his association with Rundell, Storr had executed designs in the Neoclassical, Rococo and Baroque style with equal fluency. Likewise, Hunt and Roskell exemplified the increasing desire for naturalistic ornament derived from the same source and, alongside Garrards, became the most important manufacturers of sculptural and presentation silver. Such pieces relied upon a high degree of figurative realism for their success; to achieve this, modellers at Hunt and Roskell worked directly from the nude. The firm employed some of the finest modellers and designers, notably from 1843 the French metal worker, Antoine Vechte (1800-68) who designed the Titan Vase (Goldsmith’s Co, London), displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Among the firm’s earliest designers was Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1867), who as assistant to John Flaxman (1755-1826) had worked for Storr and Co. and for Rundells. Frank Howard (1805-66) pupil and assistant to the court painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) subsequently joined Storr and Mortimer, while another portraitist, Sir George Hayter (1792-1871) designed Hunt and Roskell’s Montefiore Testimonial, 1842. The firm contributed important displays of silver and jewellery at a number of international exhibitions, notably the Great Exhibition, 1851; the London International Exhibition of 1862; the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867; the London International Exhibition, 1872 and the Health Exhibition, London in 1884 – the same year that this ewer was hallmarked.
The procession of ecstatic Bacchic revellers around the ewer’s body is derived from a relief frieze adorning the famous antique Borghese Vase and became particularly popular as a result of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s (1720-78) reproductions of it in hishighly influential publication Vasi, Candelabra, Cippi, Sarcofagi, etc. The monumental bell-shaped Pentelic marble Krater, known as the Borghese Vase, was carved in Athens during second half of the 1st century A.D. and was made as a garden ornament for the Roman market. Standing 1.72 meters tall and with a diameter of 1.35 meters, it was rediscovered in 1566 in the gardens of Sallust in Rome. By 1645 it had been placed in the Villa Borghese. On 27th September 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte, brother-in-law of Prince Camillo Borghese, purchased it, together with the bulk of the Borghese antiquities. The vase was sent to Paris soon after 1808 and by l811 was placed on display in the Musée Napoleon; it is now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Like its famous counterpart, the Borghese Vase has remained one of the most admired and influential vases to survive from antiquity. Many copies were made including one in alabaster in the Great Hall for Houghton Hall in Norfolk, and one of bronze at Osterley Park, Middlesex, both of which are paired with copies of the Medici Vase. The two were also copied three times for the Bassin de Latone at Versailles. In addition to numerous marble copies the Borghese Vase was copied in bronze on a reduced scale during the early eighteenth century and later on an even smaller scale in Rome by Giovanni Zoffoli (of which there is an example from c. 1795, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York) and Francesco Righetti. It was also reproduced in jasperware by Josiah Wedgwood’s factory and in artificial Stone by Coade. The frieze of ecstatic Bacchantes escorting a staggering Silenus was also adapted for a silver goblet designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1820. It was sometimes reproduced as a bas-relief tablet.
With its direct reference to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and his retinue of followers, such scenes provided the perfect subject for a vessel intended to hold wine. According to legend, Bacchus was the son of Semele and Jupiter, the supreme Olympian deity. While pregnant with Jupiter’s son, Semele was inadvertently killed by one of his thunderbolts, so Mercury sewed Bacchus into Jupiter’s thigh where he remained until his birth. Mercury then handed over the infant to the nymphs that lived in a grotto on Mount Nysa, where he was initially cared for. Later Bacchus was taught to make wine and using the grapevine, as well as ivy, he fought the Giants on behalf of other Gods.
Worship of Bacchus spread from Thrace to Greece in about the 8th century B.C. As the cultivation of the vine spread so too did Bacchus’s following. This grew to such an extent that by the time that the Parthenon was completed in the 5thcentury B.C. Bacchus was accepted as one of the twelve Olympian deities. Ritual worship of him was characterised by a mystic frenzy in which his followers became intoxicated with wine, believing themselves to be at one with the god. He was however initially regarded as a fertility god and was worshipped in the form of a bull or goat.
In Greece the cult of Bacchus was far greater among women. They were known as Maenads or Bacchantes. The first known representations of them appear on 5th