Thomas Heming An Elegant Neo-Classical Dessert Centrepiece on Stand

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Silver and glass                                                                                                                      
London, 1779                                                                                                                 
Maker’s mark of George Heming & William Chawner

Length: 40.6 cm, 18 in                                                                                                    
Weight: 2,208 g, 71 oz

£12,500

Silversmith Biography

The son of a Midlands merchant, Thomas Heming was apprenticed to Edmund Bodington on March 7, 1738, and turned over on the same day to the Huguenot goldsmith Peter Archambo. He registered his first mark in June 1745; in 1760 he was appointed principal goldsmith to King George III, in which capacity he was responsible for supplying regalia and plate required for the coronation. Heming held this appointment until 1782, when he was ousted after an investigation into his apparently excessive charges. Grimwade (1976, p. 543) comments that "some of his earlier surviving pieces in the Royal collection show a French delicacy of taste and refinement of execution which is unquestionably inherited from his master Archambo." Among Heming's outstanding works are a silver-gilt toilet service made for Queen Caroline of Denmark in 1766 (Dankse Kunstidustrimuseum, Copenhagen; Hernmarck 1977, pl. 727) and a wine cistern of 1770, made for Speaker Brownlow (Belton House, Lincolnshire; Grimwade 1974, pl. 12).

Description

The two-handled pirced oval bowl on four scroll supports with paw feet, chased with a band of stiff laurel leaves, with pierced Gothic-type arches, bifurcated reeded loop handles and reed and tie border. The base on four foliage and paw feet with acanthus chased scroll handles, the border chased with guilloche enclosing applied paterae, the centre with applied flowerhead on a calyx of laurel leaves, reed and tie border, with red glass liner.