A William & Mary Walnut Oyster-veneered Lace Box

No: 11212

A William & Mary walnut oyster-veneered lace box with string-banding decoration to the top, the hinged lid opening to reveal a silk-lined fitted interior.

Circa 1685

Price :£ 2350

Height: 9”,11.5(cm) Width:19”,48.5(cm) Depth14 ¼”,26(cm).

Note: The silk picture on the inside of the lid interesting as it has a caption at the food which reads:

“To heed lovely Julia

Oh be truly wise,

Offers the sorceress

& no more Lindor prize”

The image is of the sorceress and Julia and is signed Emma Crewe Del and C White Sculp. Emma Crewe was a well known artist. Wikipedia states:

Life

Crewe was the daughter of Elizabeth Shuttleworth, herself daughter of Richard Shuttleworth (1683–1749), MP for Lancashire (1705–49), and John Crewe (1709–1752), MP for Cheshire (1734–52). She was the second of six children and was particularly close to her younger sister Elizabeth (1744–1826). Crewe did not marry. She was financially secure due to a family trust set up by her father before his death, and she lived part of the time with her brother John Crewe, 1st Baron Crewe and his wife, society hostess Frances Crewe, Lady Crewe, through whom she met Josiah Wedgwood.[1]

Work

Along with Diana Beauclerk (1734–1808) and Elizabeth Templetown (1747–1823), Crewe contributed designs in the Romantic style to Josiah Wedgwood for reproduction in his studio in Rome.[2]

Crewe also made botanical art. She was part of Erasmus Darwin's circle and painted the Frontispiece to his The Loves of the Plants (2nd Ed., 1790). She was criticized for this piece by Richard Polwhele in The Unsex'd Females: "There is a charming delicacy in most of the pictures of Miss Emma Crewe; though I think, in her "Flora at play with Cupid," … she has rather overstepped the modesty of nature, by giving the portrait an air of voluptuousness too luxuriously melting."[3]

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