Gold, Diamond and Enamel-Mounted Rock Crystal Cup and Cover

#18374: Gold, Diamond and Enamel-Mounted Rock Crystal Cup and Cover
English, 1989
Cup: height 25cm, width 16cm, depth 10cm
Case: height 13cm, width 34cm, depth 23.5cm

This wheel-engraved cup and cover is carved from rock crystal and mounted in 18 carat gold with diamonds and green guilloché enamel, the bowl engraved with deer in a wooded landscape and the cover with peacocks and birds of paradise. The subject looks back to the hunting scenes engraved on rock crystal in the workshops of Renaissance Milan and of Rudolf II's court in Prague, where vessels of this kind were made for princely collections.
The cup is of oval section, the deep bowl raised on a knopped stem and stepped oval foot and closed by a domed cover with a rock crystal finial. Stags, does and fawns move through an encircling wooded landscape around the bowl, set between a band of laurel above and a border of laurel swags below. The cover carries peacocks and birds of paradise among trees and grasses over a further band of swags, the finial is engraved with a laurel wreath, and the foot with laurel sprays.
Rock crystal is natural quartz, appreciably harder than glass, and is engraved slowly against a rotating copper wheel fed with abrasive, with no margin for correction once the wheel bites. The figures are cut in intaglio and left matte, so that they read as pale, frosted silhouettes against the polished body: the stags' coats are built up in fine hatching, the trees in dense stippled dots and the swags in crisp linear cutting. Because the material is clear throughout, the animals on the far wall of the bowl remain visible through the near wall, and the herd reads as a single landscape receding in depth rather than as a band of ornament.
The mounts are of 18 carat gold. A line of brilliant-cut diamonds runs around the rim beneath a reeded gold band, with further diamond-set bands at the stem and beneath the finial, each framed by collars of green guilloché enamel, and the foot is bordered by a broad band of the same enamel between gold mouldings. At either side, a white bar handle with diamond-set terminals and a pavé collar passes through an interlaced gold loop, from which hangs a gold-capped drop of green enamel suspended on a diamond link.
The gold rim is engraved 'Asprey' and struck with a full set of hallmarks: the maker's mark, the crown and 750 standard marks for 18 carat gold, the leopard's head for London and the date letter for 1989. The cup is contained in a fitted case marked for Garrard.
Asprey was founded by William Asprey at Mitcham, in Surrey, in 1781, and moved to New Bond Street in 1847. It received its first Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria in 1862 and has supplied royal and aristocratic clients in Britain and abroad. Pieces combining a carved hardstone body with jewelled goldsmiths' mounts belong to a tradition running from the Renaissance Kunstkammer to Fabergé. Garrard, founded by the silversmith George Wickes in 1735, was appointed the first official Crown Jeweller in 1843 and held the role until 2007. It was acquired by Asprey plc in 1990, and the two houses traded together as Asprey & Garrard from 1998 until their demerger in 2002.
$180,000