Object Description
An elegant silver serving dish and cover by the world renowned maker Paul Storr. Excellent gauge silver. Smart, stylish form in the typical Georgian style with handsome applied gadroon borders. The matching handle has a bayonet fitting and when removed the cover can be used as an open dish. To both sides of the cover there is a large engraved cartouche containing a coat of arms for the Allen family. The base has a crest and motto “Fortiter” to front and back.
Weight 1946g, 62.5 troy oz.
Length 41.1cm. Width 22.1cm. Height 14cm.
London 1813.
Maker Paul Storr.
Regency period.
Sterling silver.
Marks. Stamped on the body and cover with a full and matching set of English silver hallmarks, the handle with lion, duty and maker’s marks. The body has the manufacturer’s no 899 stamped on the lid within the handle socket.
Arms: These are the Scottish arms and crest granted to John Allen in 1779.
Crest: An eagle rising proper.
Motto: “Fortiter” means “boldly” or “bravely”.
John Allen, son of a Glasgow merchant family, went to Jamaica circa 1750 and made his fortune. He returned to Britain with his wife Favell Dehany in the 1770s and purchased the Inchmartine and Errol estates in Perthshire. Two sons were born to the Allens in London – John Lee Allen in 1781 and James Allen in 1783. There is a delightful portrait of the two sons by Henry Raeburn, painted for John Allen in the early 1790s, now in the Kimbell Art Museum Fort Worth Texas. One of them must have commissioned the entrée dish, because John Allen died in January 1795 from a severe asthma attack. The sons inherited the Scottish estates.
Maker: Paul Storr
Paul Storr (28 October 1770 – 18 March 1844 ), was one of the most talented silversmiths of the late Georgian period. Today his legacy of exceptionally well crafted silver can be found worldwide in museums and private collections.
Son of Thomas Storr, a silver chaser, apprenticed 1785 to Andrew Fogelberg. First mark, as plateworker, in partnership with William Frisbee 1792. Second mark alone 1793. 3rd mark 1793. 4th mark 1794. 5th mark 1799. Subsequent 6th – 12th marks entered 1807-1834.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, established as one of London’s top silversmiths, he was producing commissions for Royalty. In 1801 he married Elizabeth Susanna Beyer with whom he was to have ten children. In 1807 Paul Storr entered into a working relationship with Philip Rundell and by 1811 was a partner, and managing the workshops for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell. During this period he kept his own marks and separate workshop, however Rundell, Bridge & Rundell were appointed Goldsmith in Ordinary to George III in 1804, and through them his reputation as a master silversmith grew.
His talents lay in being able to transform ideas and designs from Rundell, Bridge & Rundell’s designers, William Theed II and later John Flaxman II. Rundell, Bridge & Rundell’s reputation grew due to the subsequent patronage of the Prince Regent (later George IV). Storr left RUNDELL, BRIDGE & RUNDELL in 1819 and went into partnership with John Mortimer, the assistant of a retiring retail goldsmith and jeweller, WILLIAM GRAY, of 13 New Bond Street. The firm was renamed STORR & MORTIMER and Storr concentrated on the manufacture of goods for Mortimer to sell in the shop at 13 New Bond Street. Storr and Mortimer, now manufacturing and retail goldsmiths, jewellers and silversmiths with an influential clientele, moved to 156, New Bond Street, in 1838. Storr retired to Tooting in 1839 and died in 1844.
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