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Francis Crump
English, free 1741
Teapot
1772/73
Teapots were status symbols in eighteenth-century England, often made from precious materials and intricately decorated. The sides of this silver teapot are covered with narrative scenes, including an episode from “Cimon and Iphigenia,” a story from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron and a tale from the fables of Jean de La Fontaine. The scenes are minutely engraved onto the silver, with ornamental designs filling the remaining surfaces.
Image Caption
Francis Crump, Teapot, 1772/73, silver and wood. Clark Art Institute, 1963.165
Medium
silver and wood
Dimensions
4 3/8 x 7 5/16 x 3 13/16 in. (11.1 x 18.6 x 9.7 cm)
Weight: 11.8 oz (334.4 g)
Object Number
1963.165
Acquisition
Acquired by the Clark, 1963
Status
On View
Select Bibliography
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Thirty-five: Recent Silver Acquisitions. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1966. Wildenstein & Company. An Exhibition of Treasures from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts: Paintings, drawings & rare silver, for the benefit of the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, inc. (CRIA). Exhibition catalogue. New York: Wildenstein & Company, 1967. Anonymous. "Acquisitions." Museum News 45, no. 3 (March 1967). Winchester, Alice. Editorial. Antiques 92 (Sept. 1967). Clayton, Michael. The Collector's Dictionary of the Silver and Gold of Great Britain and North America. London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group for Country Life, 1971. Oman, Charles. English Engraved Silver, 1150 to 1900. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978. Banister, Judith . "Silver for the Tea Table." Antique Dealer and Collectors Guide 37 (January 1984): 347. Anonymous. "Sample Searches, II: A Curator's Search for Information to Complete a Catalogue Entry." News from RILA 3 (February 1985). De Castres, Elizabeth. A Guide to Collecting Silver. London: Bloomsbury books in association with J. Goddard and Sons, 1985. Langstaff, Bard, and James McConnaughy, eds. Fifty Years on 57th Street: An Exhibition of English, Irish, and American Silver Purchased and Sold by Our Firm over the Last Fifty Years. Exhibition catalogue. New York: S. J. Shrubsole Corp., 1986. De Castres, Elizabeth. Collecting Silver. London: Bishopsgate Press, 1986. Sotheby's. Fine English, Continental, and South American Silver. Auction catalogue. New York, 27 April 1990. Wees, Beth Carver. "English Silver in an American Museum: The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute." Silver Society Journal 4 (Autumn 1993):115–23. Wees, Beth Carver. English, Irish, and Scottish Silver at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1997. Wees, Beth Carver. "Silver in the Clark Art Institute." The Magazine Antiques 62, no. 4 (October 1997): 536–45.
Provenance
Sold Christie's, London, 5 February 1947, lot 152 (Property of a Gentleman); bought Kaye; Woolcombe-Boyce collection, sale Graves Son & Pilcher, Hove, 26 June 1963, lot 90; bought S. J. Shrubsole, Ltd., London; sold to Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, invoice dated 14 January 1964.