All's Fair

The Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair is the great summer event for leading London galleries, and ours is no exception. Since 1994, Trevor Philip & Sons has been one of this privileged group, for all exhibitors are stringently vetted, as well as the objects they offer for sale each year.

The Fair was launched in 1934, and has gone from strength to strength; under the royal patronage of H. M. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, it has an international reputation. The Fair is held in 'The Great Room', the largest ballroom in Europe at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, once the London home of the Duke of Westminster. The building has a special atmosphere as exhibitors arrive and take over their stands, sorting out what goes where. Is the carpet the right colour? Do the lights work? There is much camaraderie, and we all borrow or lend a hammer, or screw driver. Saf and I will have every object on and off the stand three or four times, before we are satisfied.

Trevor Philip & Sons stand is to be found at the entrance to the ballroom - an excellent place to meet our old friends, and to make new ones. Attracting the widest imaginable range of visitors, the Fair is as much a part of London in June as Ascot, Henley and Wimbledon. Our clients include museums, celebrities and avid collectors of scientific and marine instruments; however, someone seeking an unusual gift will also find a wide choice of objects to choose from. The Fair is so much the highlight of our year that we start planning for the next year as soon as it is over. We even find ourselves asking "Is this a Grosvenor House object?", for what is chosen has to be really special.

Just how special was eloquently described in the introduction to the 1951 Fair Handbook:

"As a spectacle alone it is superb; clocks and furniture, silver and jewellery, bronzes, porcelain and a thousand other things which prove that man is only a little lower than the angels, all displayed in a single great hall."

Trevor Philip & Sons are proud to add such unusual items as the artefacts of science, with their precision and subtlety of concept, to this major event. The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair is open from the 9-15 June 1999. Please contact us if you would like further information.

Pocket Sundial in silver,signed: Joshua Mann Ebor Fecit 1686

There is now a growing interest in the provincial instrument-making trade in Britain that certainly began as retailing of London-made products, but also had its own skilled craftsmen. Such men, as might be expected, were based in the major cities, and of these, York had a fine cultural and scientific flowering in the later 17th century. The group of scholars known as the York virtuosi created an environment in which craftsmanship flourished, and two skilled practitioners were the brothers Thomas and Joshua Mann.

 

Thomas Mann was primarily an architect, working on a number of building schemes, in particular the Market Cross at Pavement in York, sadly demolished in the 1813. He was also an engraver, as some fine signed memorial brasses bear witness. Joshua also has memorial brasses to his credit. York had some notable silversmiths in the late 17th century, before the city's assay office closed in 1716, and they may well have contracted out engraving to such skilled workmen as the Mann brothers. Not all of this will have been signed, but the lovely little silver pocket dial now in the gallery is signed and dated by Joshua Mann, the only example of an instrument bearing his name to have survived.

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Universal Ring Dial Signed by Hilkiah Bedford, c.1665, complete with printed instruction sheet

 Elegant as this ring dial is, the most exciting thing about it is the survival of its accompanying instruction sheet. The sheet, and so the instrument, are datable by the printed address of the maker: "at the Signe of the Globe near Holborn-Conduit". This was Bedford's first workshop, and it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. He then moved to Fleet Street. Very few instruction broadsheets have survived from the 17th century, and this is the earliest known so far.

 

Hilkiah Bedford was a skilled craftsman, with a number of fine instruments to his credit. There are four of his ring dials in museums, one of them in silver. His broadsheet notes that he makes mathematical instruments "in silver, brass or wood".

 

The broadsheet describes the various parts and function of the dial, and then proceeds to explain how to find first the latitude, and then the time. The particular cleverness of the universal ring dial is that it makes it possible to find the time at any location. Theinstrument was designed by the mathematician, William Oughtred, and Elias Allen and Hilkiah Bedford were the two instrument makers whom he recommended as making his invention. It is therefore likely that the text of Bedford's broadsheet comes from Oughtred's book, published in 1652.

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Engraving of a magnetic azimuth dial plate

by Henry Sutton, 1653 Plate measurement, 53/4 x 51/2 ins; diameter of dial 51/4 in.

Another item in our group of paper artefacts is this superb pull of a magnetic azimuth dial and compass rose, engraved and signed by Henry Sutton. It bears not only the year date on the dial itself, but also the full date: " August 16 1653" on the paper surround. A dial of this kind would have been intended for a horological compendium, or perhaps the base of a circumferentor, to be used by a surveyor. The design of the dial was first described by Arthur Hopton in his 'Topographicall Glasse' of 1611.

Henry Sutton , who was a Freeman of the Joiners' Company, was working in the middle years of the 17th century, and died in 1665. He was a fine engraver, famous for his engraved scales and the illustrations he provided for mathematical books. A printed paper-on-wood quadrant made by him bears the advertisement:

"This Instrument or any of the Mathematiques are made in Brass or Wood by Henry Sutton Instrument-maker behind the Royall Exchanges."

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PAPER GLOBES with instruction booklets

by Mrs Johnstone (1812) and Edward Mogg (1813)

The survival of card and paper artefacts from the early 19th century is unusual, and if they do still exist, they are frequently damaged. So these two sets of globes and booklets, in fine condition and with the original colours little faded, fully deserve the glass domes we have provided to preserve them.

Mrs Johnstone is an excellent example of the "scientific lady", of whom there were many examples in the 18th and 19th centuries, including Mary Somerville above all, but also Mrs Gatty and Mrs Ward. She was the daughter of John Lodge Cowley, Geographer to King George II, who taught at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He also drew the superb constellation figures on the glass globes made by Thomas Heath.

 "Brought up from my infancy to the sciences", Mrs Johnstone herself became a teacher, "instructing many of the Nobility, in the use of the globes, orrery, maps, projections". She taught "Ladies in the Use of Globes" at her house, 20 George Street, Tower Hill. The Dissected Pocket Sphere was her invention, and she firmly states that Mogg's version was a piece of plagiarism. The design is indeed something to be proud of, for it is a combination of terrestrial and celestial globes, capable of teaching both geography and astronomy, as well as time-telling.

Mogg's Celestial Sphere, "for the instruction of Youth in Astronomy" was produced for purely commercial purposes by a successful printer and mapmaker. Edward Mogg made his name by publishing maps and guides to London, that enabled travellers to triumph over dishonest cab drivers. There was clearly a good market for dissected globes, and Mr Mogg was determined to cash in on it: but the credit for an ingenious invention must go to Mrs Johnstone.

 

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A SPECIAL GIFT?

 

Composite Picture Clockwise from top left

 

 

1. 18th-century circumferentor, in an oak box. Signed on scale: "J.Search London"; James Search was working in Golden Square, London, from 1771. The retailer, whose trade card is in the box lid, was William Harris of High Holborn, London.
Price £ 2,400.00

 

2. French prisoner-of-war work, early 19th-century "Spinning Jenny" made of bone. With two figures wearing Breton hats; one figure holding a baby; all operating and moving from a central crank handle with a windmill.

Price £ 4,200.00

 

3. Early 19th-century marine chronometer in mahogany, brass-bound box, signed: Parkinson & Frodsham, Change Alley, Cornhill, London. This partnership specialised in chronometer making from 1801.
Price £ 8,250.00

 

4. Pocket 23/4 inch terrestrial globe in

fishskin case, signed by J & W Cary, and dated 1791. The globe shows Captain Cook's voyages on the Resolution and the Discovery in the 1770s.

Price £ 5,500.00

5. Artist's model in wood, 26 inches high, finely articulated and finished. Probably French, 19th century with carved face, feet and hands and a defined ribcage.
Price £ 4,200.00

 

6. Scrimshaw depiction of a three-masted ship on fire, polychrome, 19th-century; inscribed "Lieu. J.Petley R.N."

 

Price £ 6,500.00

 

7&8. Sandglasses, a single, and a fine pair, of varying time duration, mid

18th century. Manufactured from glass and brass.

No7 Price £ 2,600.00 No8 £ 2,500.00

 

 

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FIFTY ONE THIRTY.

Issue 2. May 1999

© Trevor Philip and Sons