The Chetwynd-Talbot Tray
Silver-gilt

London 1805

Maker’s mark of Digby Scott & Benjamin Smith; Retailed by Rundell, Bridge and Rundell

Length: 23 ¼ inches (59 cm)

Weight: 202 oz. (6,269 g)

Oval and on four bacchanalian mask and goat's-hoof feet, with cast and applied openwork grapevine border, with ribbon and berried laurel leaf rim, the handles centering a leopard's mask with fruit garland rim and ram's-head joins, engraved with a coat-of-arms below an earl's coronet, marked on back and on edge of base, further stamped 'RUNDELL, BRIDGE ET RUNDELL AURIFICES REGIS ET PRINCIPIS WALLIæ LONDINI FECERUNT'

The arms are those of Talbot quartering Chetwynd impaling Lambart for Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot of Hensol (1777-1849) and his wife Frances Thomasine, eldest daughter of Charles Lambert of Beau Parc in co. Meath. who he married in 1800.

Provenance

Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot of Hensol (1777-1849).
Henry Spencer and Sons, Retford, 1966 (one of a pair).
Mrs. B.E. Llewelyn, Christie's, London, 31 March 1971, lot 118.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 28 November 1979, lot 29.

Literature

J.B. Hawkins, The Al Tajir Collection of Silver and Gold, London, 1983, p. 92.
The Glory of the Goldsmith, Magnificent Gold and Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, London, 1989, p. 164.

Exhibited

London, Christie's, The Glory of the Goldsmith, Magnificent Gold and Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, 1989, no. 126
Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot of Hensol (1777-1849)

Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot of Hensol (1777-1849) was the son of John Chetwynd Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot of Hensol (1750-1793), and his wife, Charlotte (d. 1804), daughter of Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire. He succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father in May 1793 and matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford the following year. After leaving Oxford Talbot joined Lord Whitworth's embassy in Russia as a voluntary attaché , returning to England before 1800, when he married Frances Thomasine (d.1819), eldest daughter of Charles Lambert of Beau Parc in co. Meath. in 1800.

Talbot was heavily involved in the organizing of a volunteer force for Staffordshire to see off a possible invasion by the French under Napoleon. In 1817 he became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and, until he was replaced in 1821, he rendered considerable services to the agriculture of the country, in recognition of which he was presented with the freedom of Drogheda. From 1812 until his death Talbot also served as Lord Lieutenant of the Staffordshire.

Talbot died at Ingestre Hall in Staffordshire in 10 January 1849 and was buried at Ingestre, being succeeded by his second son, Henry John Chetwynd who also became 18th Earl of Shrewsbury when he succeeded a distant cousin, in 1856.

While the exact origins of the main house are not known Ingestre, in Staffordshire, has certainly seen a number of renaissances, being part-Jacobean, part-Carolean and also part-Regency. The estate was inherited by Sir Walter Chetwynd in 1613, who set about building a substantial Jacobean new house. The next stage of alterations occured in the late 17th century carried out by Sir Walter's grandson, Walter, 1st Viscount Chetwynd (1678-1736) and it was not until the early 19th century, in the Regency period, under the stewardship of the 2nd Earl Talbot, that the house underwent another series of alterations. Following his diplomatic mission to St Petersburg with Lord Whitworth around 1800 the 2nd Earl employed the architect John Nash to update much of Ingestre's essentially late 17th/early 18th century interiors.