Rectangular octagonal dish, Qianlong c.1760 with the arms of Tyndall
This service was undoubtedly made for Thomas Tyndall KCB (1723-1794) a Bristol merchant whose family owned sugar plantations in Jamaica, and whose father, Onesiphorus, had been a founding partner of a Bristol bank. In 1756 Thomas married Alicia Smith of Barbados at Bristol and during 1758-61 built Royal Fort House (now owned by Bristol University) generally considered to have the best 18th century interiors in Bristol, almost certainly ordering the service at that time. Alicia did not live long to enjoy it, dying in 1764 after the birth of their only son, Thomas.
The younger Thomas (1764-1804) married Marianne Schimmelpenninck in 1786, daughter of Lambert Schimmelpenninck, a Dutch shipping merchant in Bristol, and although both died young in 1804/5, they nevertheless had ten children in thirteen years. A fine portrait of Thomas and Marianne with seven of their children, the two eldest boys holding cricket bats, by the portraitist Thomas Beach, c.1797, is in the collection of Bristol University and on display in the house. A memorial to them, with the Tyndall arms and crest as on the service, can be found in Christ Church, Bristol (see last image).
Marianne’s younger brother, Lambert, had a wife similarly called Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (neé Galton), born a Quaker through her mother, Lucy Barclay, who would convert first to Methodism and then to the Moravian church, becoming a writer of some note. She joined the Bristol Female Anti-Slavery Society, having given up sugar at the age of 12 as a ’personal protest against the slave trade’ and campaigned tirelessly throughout her life for this cause.
Provenance: from the Phil Cooke Collection, with collection label ’498’ on the base.
Reference : Howard, David S.; Chinese Armorial Porcelain, Volume I, p.572 , where this actual dish is illustrated.
Condition : Perfect condition, gilding very bright.
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