Paul de Lamerie (1688 - London 1751) The Liddell Salver

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AN IMPORTANT GEORGE II SILVER TRAY 

Mark of Paul de Lamerie, London, 1735 
Shaped rectangular on four bracket feet, cast and chased with strapwork, husks and flowerheads, engraved with a band of scrolls, shells and latticework and with crests at the corners and a similar central cartouche enclosing a coat-of-arms, the molded raised incurved border applied with tied reeding, marked on reverse

Liddell impaling Delme for Sir Henry Liddell, 4th Baronet (1708-1784) and his wife Anne, only daughter of Sir Peter Delme, alderman and Lord Mayor of London, whom he married in 1735

24 5/8in. (62.5cm.) long; 156oz. (4852gr.)

Provenance

Robert R Young Foundation from the Estate of Anita O'Keefe Young, sold Sotheby's, New York 1985
His Excellency Mohamed Mahdi Altajir;
Christie's New York 2003
Koopman Rare Art

Exhibitions

The Glory of thr Goldsmith: Magnificent Gold & Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, 1989 (no.71, p.102)

Silversmith Biography

Paul de Lamerie arrived in England with his Huguenot parents in or before 1689, having been baptized at 's Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands in 1688. In 1703 he was apprenticed to the Huguenot goldsmith Pierre Platel, and after being admitted to the freedom of the Goldsmiths' Company, he registered his first mark and set up a workshop in Windmill Street, Soho, in 1712. He took thirteen apprentices between 1715 and 1749 who paid premiums varying between £10 and £45m In 1716 he married Louisa Juliott, also a Huguenot, and by her had six children, three of whom died in childhood. Little more of his personal history is known, although his career in the Goldsmiths' Company is comparatively well documented. By 1717, he was already referred to as 'the King's Silversmith' but again in a complaint 'for making and selling Great quantities of Large Plate which he doth not bring to Goldsmith's Hall to be mark't according to Law.' He joined the livery in 1717; fourteen years later he was elected to the court of assistants. In 1743 he was appointed fourth warden and in 1747 second warden; that he never became prime warden probably due to ill health. From the outset he had wealthy clients such as the Honourable George Treby and the Duke of Sutherland. Among his more important later patrons were Sir Robert Walpole, Baron Anson, and the fifth Earl of Mountrath. A gradual expansion of his business culminated in his move in 1739 to considerably larger premises in Gerrard street. His pre-eminent position in the trade is signified by the commission he received in 1740 from the Goldsmiths' Company to provide two of their most splendid pieces of ceremonial display plate, a silver-gilt inkstand and the famous rococo ewer and dish.