Countess of Listowel - A George IV sterling silver three-piece tea service, London 1826 by Robert Garrard II (reg. 16th April 1818)

Comprising a teapot, milk jug, and twin handled sugar bowl. Each of circular fluted gourd or 'melonized' form the milk and sugar with gadrooned rims, raised on shaped circular feet. The teapot with ivory handle and scallop shell junction, the lid with a flower finial upon a calyx, the spout with applied triple scallop shell. The milk and sugar with entwined ivy root handles with fruiting junctions and gilt interiors. The teapot engraved with an impaled coat of arms above a crest of a lion's head erased within a fetterlock and motto below ‘Au Bon Droit’, below all this later cursive ML surmounted by an Earl’s coronet. The milk and sugar with the same crest to either side and the same initials with coronet above to one side. All fully and part-marked. (3)

Length of teapot – 24.5 cm / 9.5 inches

Weight - 1806 grams / 58.06 ozt

The crest is for Wyndham

The arms are for Wyndham impaling Wyndham

For George Thomas Wyndham, of Cromer (1805 - 1830) who married on the 12^th July 1826 Maria Augusta Windham, later Countess of Listowel (1805 - 1871). He the son of George Wyndham, Esquire (1766 - 1810) and his wife Marianne Bacon (b. 1830). She the daughter of Vice Admiral William Windham Lukin of Felbrigge Hall (1768 - 1833) and Anne Sara Thellusson (1774 - 1849), her father changed his name, assuming the name Windham along with the family coat of arms by Royal Licenseon the 28^th April 1824.

Maria later married William Hare, 2nd Earl of Listowel (1801-1856) on the 23^rd July 1831, and had issue.

The initials are for Maria Augusta Hare, Countess of Listowel.

A set of four basting spoons in King's Hourglass pattern of London 1809 by William Eley, William Fearn and William Chawner with the same initials with crest and Earl's coronet were sold Hartley's 5th September 2018, Lot 147 (£620 hammer).

Provenance: Bonham's, Knightsbridge, 9 Feb 2011, lot 273 (£1440, incl. premium), where sold as for the Earl’s of Egremont.

This form of teapot is directly modelled after a French example of this period by Odiot, an example illustrated Brett, V. (1986). The Sotheby’s Directory of Silver 1600-1940. London: Philip Wilson. p. 380. fig. 1803. Another example of which was sold with coffee pot Bonham’s Knightsbridge, 21 March 2023, lot 288 (£1657.50 incl. prem)

Ivory declaration: FTSJP22U