English Chinoiserie style twenty-six-piece silver toilet service

English Chinoiserie style twenty-six-piece silver toilet service
English, Early 20th Century
Mirror: Height 51cm, width 33cm, depth 28cm
Candlesticks: Height 18cm, width 11cm, depth 11cm
 
This twenty-six-piece silver toilet service was created in the early 20th Century, after a model made in London between 1673-1682. The original set is on display at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Large toilet services, like this, would have been essential luxuries for elite women in the 17th Century. They were used to store makeup, perfume, ribbons, hair and wig pins, and everything else needed to dress fashionably for high society. The service would have been laid out on a fine piece of lace on a table in a lady’s day bedroom or state bedchamber. This impressive collection of objects would have been displayed to impress guests and convey the owner’s wealth and status.
 
The toilet service was crafted collaboratively by three accomplished London silversmiths: twelve pieces were made in 1914-1916 by Carrington & Co, three in 1933 by Richard Comyns, and eleven in 1935-1938 by Lionel Alfred Crichton. The twenty-six silver pieces are all fully hallmarked.
 
This toilet service includes a table mirror with an easel back, a hand-held mirror, a pair of candlesticks, two hairbrushes, two clothes brushes, and dust and comb brush. There is a large box for storing gloves, hair combs, or jewellery, and a pin cushion. The two pairs of smaller boxes were designed to contain pastes, powders or ribbons, and the two pairs of jars with stoppers (one pair with glass inserts) would have stored perfume or liquid cosmetics. The pair of tiny covered jars may have provided a similar function. It is possible the two shallow dishes, and the pair of twin-handled covered bowls were used to serve food to guests.
 
Literature: see 'English, Irish and Scottish Silver at the Sterling and Francine Art Institute' by Beth Carver Wees, New York, 1997, no. 397.
 
Artist/Maker: Carrington & Co, Lionel Alfred Crichton, Richard Comyns