A very fine Pair of Huguenot Silver Waiters, London 1742 by Augustin Courtauld
Both hallmarked for London 1742 with the Huguenot maker’s mark ‘AC over a fleur de lis’ for Augustin Courtauld.
A rare opportunity to acquire a pair of Huguenot eighteenth century wine/serving waiters. Both are in very fine condition with no engravings, erasures or repairs. Exceptional gauge and patina. To find a surviving pair of waiters from this period in such good condition is very rare.
Height: 3cm or 1"
Diameter: 18cm or 7"
Total weight (pair): 730g, 25.75 oz or 23.47 oz Troy
The small salver or waiter was used everywhere in the household as an essential support for any item offered by a servant on any occasion, both as a mark of respect and to prevent any spills. Glasses had no place on the dinner table until about 1770, and the diner requiring a drink summoned a servant who filled a clean, sometimes chilled glass at the sideboard with wine, also served chilled from the cooler (whatever the colour), and offered it on a waiter or salver before returning it immediately to the cistern to be rinsed.
Augustin Courtauld 1685/86 - 1751. The young Augustin came to England from France during the persecution of the Protestants in 1696, and in 1701, he was apprenticed to the Huguenot silversmith Simon Pantin. He was made free of the Goldsmiths’ Company by service on 20th October 1708. Whereupon, he built a reputation for producing exceptional domestic silver. He was he head of a successful, prolific and renowned family of Silversmith’s, and were prominent members of the Huguenot community which contributed so notably to the arts and skilled crafts, commercial enterprise and public life in eighteenth century England. Very few examples of his work have survived, with most pieces being held in private collections notably in the Courtauld Institute Gallery.
