Beyond the Maker’s Mark
Paul de Lamerie Silver
in the Cahn Collection
Ellenor Alcorn
with a foreword by
Tessa Murdoch
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Paul de Lamerie is widely known as England's
greatest eighteenth-century silversmith. Born in the Low Countries, he grew up in
London’s vibrant West End where skilled artisans, many of them Huguenots like
himself, supplied the flourishing luxury trades. He was a resourceful businessman,
with a client base that included powerful Whigs, newly rich merchants, livery
companies, and foreign courts. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was to take
masterful advantage of the skilled specialists who worked anonymously—beyond the
maker’s mark—for London’s silversmiths. These artisans—chasers, mold
makers, casters and engravers—many of them foreign-born, created the great rococo
pieces for which de Lamerie is famous. The Maynard dish of 1736, in this collection,
has long been recognized as the earliest appearance of an unnamed artist whose
rhythmic compositions and luminous chasing represent England’s most innovative
rococo silver. Known as the ‘Maynard Master,’ this artist is now associated with a
series of drawings that reveal the essence of his artistic sensibilities. De Lamerie’s
business acumen was such that he later employed many of this master’s models
in the creation of less expensive production pieces.
Organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, this exhibition of forty-six objects
from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Cahn presents some of the most ambitious
pieces of silver marked by de Lamerie. Following its showing at London’s Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, the Brooks Museum, Memphis, and the Saint Louis Art Museum, the
exhibition travelled to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
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Preface
Kaywin Feldman, formerly Director, Memphis Brooks Museum, Memphis, Tennessee; now Director and President, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Tessa Murdoch, Deputy Keeper, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Paul de Lamerie and the London Scene
Note to the Reader
Catalogue
- Section I: Paul de Lamerie’s contemporaries
- Section II: Paul de Lamerie
Select Bibliography
Photographic Credits
Index
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Ellenor Alcorn is Associate Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York. Between 2003 and 2010 she was consulting curator for the Jerome and Rita Gans Collection of English Silver at the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts. She is preparing a catalogue of the British silver in the Toledo Museum of Art. For twenty years she was a curator in the Department of
European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is the author of English Silver in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston (vol. 1, 1993 and vol. 2, 2000) and Beyond the Maker’s Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection (2006).
She also contributed to Rococo Silver in England and Its Colonies: Papers from a Symposium at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
Richmond, in 2004 (2006).
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This book is published in conjunction with
the touring exhibition Beyond the Maker’s Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the
Cahn Collection, organized and circulated by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee.
The exhibit toured to:
- Victoria and Albert Museum
London, November 7, 2006-January 21, 2007
- Memphis Brooks Museum
Memphis, Tennessee, March 30-July 22, 2007
- Saint Louis Art Museum
St. Louis, Missouri, October 28, 2007-January 27, 2008
- Powerhouse Museum
Sydney, April-July 2008
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Ellenor Alcorn has neatly ... made the Cahn collection of silver
marked by de Lamerie into an illustration of the complexities of authorship in silver... Tessa Murdoch
elegantly sets the scene by describing the Huguenot community in London during the period.
Christopher Hartop
in The Burlington Magazine
Ellenor Alcorn [has produced] a lively, up-to-date picture of the interdependence and working relationships
of eighteenth-century master silversmiths. The reader gains not only knowledge of de Lamerie as a silversmith
and businessman but as a man who was committed to the Huguenot community... The catalog features beautiful
photos and meticulous research for each object and as such is a treat for English silver aficionados.
Dorothea Burstyn in Silver Magazine
Dit boek is een welkome aanvulling op de reeds bestaande boeken
achttiende-eeuws antiek Engels pronksilver.
Janjaap Luijt in Edelmetaal
This admirably researched volume is a journey through the diversity of skill required to produce some
of the 18th century’s greatest silverware and illustrates how with their advanced design and technical
competency the Huguenots and especially de Lamerie conquered the silver trade in England. We are indebted to
Ellenor Alcorn for this work which is a positive addition to any library.
Peter Le Rossignol in
Huguenot Society Proceedings
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Contact the
publisher for further information by e-mail: book enquiries,
or
by letter: John Adamson, 90 Hertford Street, Cambridge CB4 3AQ, England.
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Please print off the order form and
send it by mail to John Adamson, 90 Hertford Street, Cambridge CB4 3AQ, England.
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