antiquesandartireland.com

Information about Art, Antiques and Auctions in Ireland and around the world
  • ABOUT
  • About Des
  • Contact
  • AN IRISH SILVER PORRINGER FROM THE TIME OF OLIVER CROMWELL

    The Porringer dates to the time of Oliver Cromwell.

    The Porringer dates to the time of Oliver Cromwell.  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR A HAMMER PRICE OF £25,000

    A porringer made in Dublin during the time of Oliver Cromwell is to be auctioned by Sworders Auctioneers at Stansted in England on November 30. Dating to between 1659 and 1663 it is estimated at £4,000-6,000 and is reckoned to be one of the oldest pieces of secular Irish silver known.  Engraved with the initials I.S. it is marked with a Dublin Harpl

    The porringer is from the collection of Col. S.L. Bibby.  According to his granddaughter much of his collection was stolen.   Seven pieces from the collection of Col. Bibby were included in an exhibition entitled Seven Centuries of English Domestic Silver at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1958.

    Among the tiny corpus of pre-1660 domestic wares published in Tony Sweeney’s catalogue raisonné of Irish Stuart Silver (1995) is an austere porringer from the end of the Commonwealth period. It was shown by How of Edinburgh at the Antique Dealers Fair and Exhibition at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel in 1967 priced at £3,000. An advertisement in the Connoisseur magazine in the same year stated: ‘There would appear to be only one earlier piece of Irish secular plate at present recorded’. At the time, only a table salt made in Dublin c.1640 by the English migrant goldsmith George Gallant was thought to pre-date it.

    Leave a Reply