Benjamin Smith II Sterling Silver

Our superb pair of Regency silver-gilt sugar vases and covers were made in London in 1816 by Benjamin Smith II and Benjamin Smith III, and retailed by Green, Ward and Green. Weight: 1,493 g, 48 oz. Height: 17.8 cm, 7 in. The vases after Roman marble models, vase-shaped and on square plinths, the lower body fluted above a band of scrolling foliage on a matted ground, the shoulder with a band of acanthus leaves, the cover chased with grapevine and with a bud finial. Each marked on foot and cover bezel, the foot further stamped 'Green, Ward and Green, Londini, fecerunt' The source of the design for these sugar vases is a Roman urn in the celebrated antique sculpture collection of the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, identified by David Udy in Piranesi's Vasi, the English Silversmith and his Patrons, Burlington Magazine, December 1978, p. 837, fig. 55-57. Unlike the Warwick Vase, which had been popularized by Piranesi's engravings of the eighteenth century, the Lansdowne urn apparently was reproduced directly in silver before John Duit engraved it around 1813. The design in silver is attributed to the sculptor John Flaxman, who used a variation of the urn in his tomb monument for Sir Thomas Burrell in 1796. Flaxman became Rundell's most important designer around the time the firm became Royal Goldsmiths in 1804. In this period, Digby Scott...