Dutch Tortoiseshell Tea Caddy With Silver Mounts, C, 1830

Details

Description

Dutch Tortoiseshell Tea Caddy with Silver Mounts
Circa 1830

This Dutch tea caddy is of rectangular form with a serpentine … Read more Dutch Tortoiseshell Tea Caddy with Silver Mounts
Circa 1830

This Dutch tea caddy is of rectangular form with a serpentine front and back, veneered throughout in richly figured tortoiseshell. The domed and canted cover rises to a raised tablet set with a silver plaque, and fine silver stringing divides each panel of the top and sides, following the contours of the case. The front is fitted with a shaped silver keyhole escutcheon of scalloped outline. The caddy stands on four turned ivory feet of button form, one at each corner, and the underside is covered in dark leather. The cover opens on brass hinges, its edge and the rim of the base faced in ivory, to a silvered interior fitted with a loose tortoiseshell inner cover with a turned ivory knob.

Small in scale and warm in tone, the caddy sits well on a desk, a bedside table or a library shelf, and makes a fine addition to a grouping of boxes or other small objects on a side table or mantel.

Dimensions
Height: 4 inches (10.2 cm)
Width: 4½ inches (11.4 cm)
Depth: 3 inches (7.6 cm)

Provenance
Private Collection
With Sallea Antiques, New Canaan, Connecticut

Condition
Good. With its key.

Historical Context
Tea reached Europe through the Dutch East India Company, whose ships are generally credited with landing the first consignments at Amsterdam around 1610, and the Netherlands remained one of the principal centers of the European tea trade through the eighteenth century. The word caddy derives from the Malay kati, a unit of weight of about one and a third pounds by which tea was sold in the East. Because the leaf was costly, it was kept under lock in small cases of fine materials, and in the decades after 1800 tortoiseshell, the plates of the hawksbill turtle softened with heat and laid as veneer, was among the most prized, mounted in silver and set with ivory in England and across northern Europe.

(Ref: NY11240-nprr) See less