Robert Garrard II, Rare and Unusual Sterling Silver Bowls or Sauce Tureens

Catalog Note: A set of four silver-gilt salts by Garrard of 1844, modeled with the same drake form, is recorded and was almost certainly part of the same service. The mythical beast points to the heraldry of the commissioning family.
Edmund Cotterill (d. 1860) headed Garrard's design department from circa 1831, and was responsible for the firm's most ambitious sculptural plate. His monumental parcel-gilt tankard of 1844, surmounted by a Saint George and the Dragon finial, was a Royal commission for that year's Ascot Trophy; a related example of 1846 is illustrated in Charlotte Gere and John Culme, Garrard: The Crown Jewellers for 150 Years, London, 1993, p. 16, and a further version was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Illustrated London News declared Cotterill foremost among the artists modelling for the silver trade, and credited his designs - exhibited annually at Garrard's - with a reputation no rival house could match (vol. I, 1842, p. 73). A signed Cotterill tankard of 1845 sold at Sotheby's, New York, 4 April 2023, lot 63 ($38,100, including premium). The present tureens and salts are very probably from his hand.