Object Description
No: 11212
A William & Mary Laburnum Oyster-veneered lace box with Holly banding decoration to the top, the hinged lid opening to reveal a silk-lined fitted interior.
Circa 1685 Price :£ 2350-00p.
Height: 9”,11.5(cm) Width:19”,48.5(cm) Depth14 ¼”,26(cm).
Note: The silk picture on the inside of the lid is interesting as it has a caption at the foot which reads:
“To heed lovely Julia, Oh be truly wise,
Offers the sorceress & no more Lindor prize”
The image appears to be of the sorceress and Julia. It is signed Emma Crewe Del and C White Sculp.
Emma Crewe was a well known artist. Wikipedia states:
She was the second of six children and was particularly close to her younger sister Elizabeth (1744–1826). Crewe did not marry. She was financially secure due to a family trust set up by her father before his death, and she lived part of the time with her brother John Crewe, 1st Baron Crewe and his wife, society hostess Frances Crewe, Lady Crewe, through whom she met Josiah Wedgwood.[1]
Crewe contributed designs in the Romantic style to Josiah Wedgwood for reproduction in his studio in Rome.[2] They were also featured on his Jasperware range. Crewe also produced botanical art. She was part of Erasmus Darwin’s circle and painted the Frontispiece to his The Loves of the Plants (2nd Ed., 1790). She was criticized for this piece by Richard Polwhele in The Unsex’d Females: “There is a charming delicacy in most of the pictures of Miss Emma Crewe; though I think, in her “Flora at play with Cupid,” … she has rather overstepped the modesty of nature, by giving the portrait an air of voluptuousness too luxuriously melting.”[3]
It begs the question as to whether Julia and Lindor appear in any of the poems written by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin the author of “The Descent of Man” and “The Origin of the Species”.