Silver from London and Turin: Diplomacy by Display and George Hervey, Earl of Bristol, Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Savoy, 1755–58

Rothwell, James

Silver from London and Turin: Diplomacy by Display and George Hervey, Earl of Bristol, Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Savoy, 1755–58

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Book chapter

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Rothwell, James

Date published

2017

Abstract

There survives at Ickworth House in Suffolk, a vast collection of silver (Fig. 10.1) assembled by the Hervey family, Earls and subsequently Marquesses of Bristol. It includes some 70 pieces made in Turin in the mid-1750s which constitute perhaps the largest remaining collection anywhere in the world of eighteenth-century Turinese silver of one period and one patron. That patron was George William Hervey, second Earl of Bristol (1721-75) (Fig. 10.2), who served as envoy extraordinary to the King of Sardinia from 1755 to 1758 and had, earlier in the decade, commissioned much of the rest of the collection from one of the principal goldsmiths of London. The combined hoard, all of the highest quality, style and exuberance of form and extending to nearly a thousand individual pieces, was an essential part of his diplomatic and political armoury and went on to be used for the remainder of his high-ranking career. Its survival, virtually intact, along with the extensive evidence of Lord Bristol’s time in Turin, sheds light on aspects of the craftsmanship, fashion, politics and social history of the two courts. George Hervey was born into an immensely wealthy and politically ambitious family who had, by the 1730s, firmly established themselves at the heart of British court affairs. His grandfather, John Hervey (1665-1751), received a barony in 1703 thanks to the patronage of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and adroit support of the Hanoverian faction later in Queen Anne’s reign led to his advancement to the Earldom of Bristol on George I’s accession in 1714. It was with the future George II and Queen Caroline, however, that the importance of the Herveys really flourished: the earl’s eldest son, Carr, Lord Hervey, was appointed a Groom of the Bedchamber to the then Prince of Wales in 1714, and the Countess of Bristol became a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess four years later. George Hervey’s father John, who succeeded as Lord Hervey on Carr’s death in 1723, proved the most successful of all.

Contributor (person)

Bianchi, Paola

Wolfe, Karin