Christopher Hartop
 

A Documentary George II Silver Soup Tureen and Cover Supplied by George Wickes to Sir Robert Walpole in 1738 This important tureen is one of a small group of English eighteenth-century silver with a completely documented record of its original purchase. It was supplied to Sir Robert Walpole, the first, or ‘prime’, minister of George I and George II, by the Suffolk-born goldsmith and retailer George Wickes on July 29, 1738. Wickes’s Gentleman’s Ledgers, preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, record its purchase by Walpole for £63 2s 0d. Walpole, the builder of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, commissioned William Kent to carry out most of its interior decoration. The design of this tureen, based loosely on drawings by Giulio Romano, may also be the work of Kent. We were very pleased that this tureen could return to Norfolk when we negotiated its sale on behalf of a New York collector to Norwich Castle Museum, England. It is now on view in the newly-renovated keep of Norwich Castle.

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