MARK OF PAUL DE LAMERIE, LONDON, 1750

THE GOUGH BASKET

Distinguished by the Huguenot scholar P. A. S. Phillips in his 1935 monograph¹ as for either bread or cake, de Lamerie's baskets were clearly amongst his workshops’ most favoured designs. They encapsulate his mastery of the high Rococo style. The Gough basket exhibits many naturalistic elements applied to the border, handle and feet which showcase the evolution of Rococo over a quarter of a century.
There are over fifty known surving baskets from the de Lamerie workshop dating from 1724 to 1751.² The form of his baskets evolved over this period, from the restrained basketweave sided examples of the 1720s and 30s, with symmetrical armorial cartouches, influenced by French Régence patterns, such as the 1731 example in the Goldsmiths' Company collection³, to a high Rococo pair of 1744 now in the Ashmolean Museum⁴ which incorporate the influence of carvers such as Jean-Baptiste Honoré Torro,⁵ with opposed pairs of applied ornament; lion masks, flowers and cherub heads. The pair of silver-gilt baskets of 1747 made for Ralph Sneyd (1723-1793) of Keele Hall, Staffordshire and now at Colonial Williamsburg⁶ are a tour-de-force of de Lamerie's rococo style with sculptural cameos of animal heads and cherubs wielding sickles amidst a delicate pierced and engraved framework.

The influence of the de Lamerie workshop can also be seen in the work of the ‘Lamerie’ group, a small number of the most accomplished London goldsmiths whose work have similarities of style and quality, comprising de Lamerie, David Willaume, Paul Crespin, Peter Archambo and others. Schroder has suggested that they ‘would seem either to have supplied each other with finished or partially finished plate or to have had access to the same pool of casting patterns’.⁷


THE GOUGHS OF PERRY HALL AND OLD FALLINGS HALL

The Gough family was established in Staffordshire by the late 17th century. Walter Gough (1677-1730), traveller and writer, inherited Perry Hall, Staffordshire, near Birmingham, and Old Fallings Hall, Bushbury on the death of his father Sir Henry Gough (1649-1724). Walter rebuilt Old Fallings Hall and married Martha Harwood, a niece of Sir Richard Hill. His son, Walter Gough the younger (1712-1773) succeeded to the properties upon his father's death in 1730 and it is probable that the arms on the basket are his.

There are other members of his family for whom the arms may have been engraved. It is possible the arms could be for Walter's uncle Charles Gough (1693-1774), a director of the East India Company, who was unmarried, however, a mark of cadency or difference, would normally have been used to indicate the arms are not for the most senior line of the family. Unfortunately the exact rules of heraldic engraving were not always followed, therefore Charles Gough is a possibility. He left the bulk of his estate including his plate to his nephew Richard Gough (1735-1809), Walter Gough the younger's first cousin.

1. P. A. S. Phillips, Paul de Lamerie, Citizen and Goldsmith of London, London, 1935.
2. T. Schroder, The Gilbert Collection of Gold and Silver, Los Angeles, 1988, pp. 246-8.
3. S. Hare, Paul de Lamerie, London, 1990, no. 57, p. 101.
4. Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, acc. no. WA1946.122.1.
5. As engraved by C. Cochin, Cartouches Nouvellement Inventes, circa 1716 and J. Pine, A New Book of Ornaments, 1730.
6. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, obj. no. 1938-45,1.
7. T. Schroder, ‘Evidence without documents: patterns of ornament in rococo and Régence silver’, Silver Studies Journal, no. 20 (2004), pp. 58-71.