A Set of Four George II 'Regence' Candlesticks
London, 1733-34
Maker's mark of Paul de Lamerie
Height:19.6cm., 7 3/4 in.
Weight:2,597.5gr., 83oz. 5dwt.
Engraved with the coat-of-arms of Carmichael, for John Carmichael, 3rd Earl of Hyndford
Provenance: Montague G. Thorold, Christie's London, 5 March 1919, lot 111
Sotheby's, London, 4 December 1969, lot 246
Francis E. Fowler III, Sotheby’s, New York, 21 October 1998, lot 91
Literature: Vanessa Brett, The Sotheby's Dictionary of Silver, London, 1986, p. 174, no. 704 In the Regence style, the circular bases chased with a border of shells and foliage, the baluster panelled columns chased with husks and profile busts, each rising from a guilloche chased girdle, the sconces partly chased with a stiff leaves rising from gadrooned octagonal discs, engraved with arms and crests, scratch weights to underside

The arms are of John Carmichael, 3rd Earl of Hyndford, K.T. (1707-1767) envoy to the King of Prussia during the invasion of Silesia in 1742 and greatly instrumental in effecting the treaty of Breslau, 11 June 1742. He was invested K.T. by the King of Prussia in 1742 with the addition to his paternal coat-of-arms of the eagle of Silesia. His first wife, whom he married in 1732, was Elizabeth, widow of Robert, 1st Lord Romney, and daughter and co-heir Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell (1650-1707). She was a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Orange until 1750 and died at the Hague later that year.
The crests (within the insignia of the Order of the Thistle, conferred 1742) engraved on the undersides of these candlesticks are those of of Sir John Carmichael-Gibson, Bt. of Skirling, co. Peebles, the 3rd Earl of Hyndford’s collateral descendant.

Artist Biography:
Paul de Lamerie arrived in England with his Huguenot parents in or before 1689, having been baptized at 's Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands in 1688. In 1703 he was apprenticed to the Huguenot goldsmith Pierre Platel, and after being admitted to the freedom of the Goldsmiths' Company, he registered his first mark and set up a workshop in Windmill Street, Soho, in 1712. He took thirteen apprentices between 1715 and 1749 who paid premiums varying between £10 and £45m In 1716 he married Louisa Juliott, also a Huguenot, and by her had six children, three of whom died in childhood. Little more of his personal history is known, although his career in the Goldsmiths' Company is comparatively well documented. By 1717, he was already referred to as 'the King's Silversmith' but again in a complaint 'for making and selling Great quantities of Large Plate which he doth not bring to Goldsmith's Hall to be mark't according to Law.' He joined the livery in 1717; fourteen years later he was elected to the court of assistants. In 1743 he was appointed fourth warden and in 1747 second warden; that he never became prime warden probably due to ill health. From the outset he had wealthy clients such as the Honourable George Treby and the Duke of Sutherland. Among his more important later patrons were Sir Robert Walpole, Baron Anson, and the fifth Earl of Mountrath. A gradual expansion of his business culminated in his move in 1739 to considerably larger premises in Gerrard street. His pre-eminent position in the trade is signified by the commission he received in 1740 from the Goldsmiths' Company to provide two of their most splendid pieces of ceremonial display plate, a silver-gilt inkstand and the famous rococo ewer and dish.