Acquired by Sir Wyndham Knatchbull-Wyndham, 6th Baronet (1737-1763) or his heir Sir Edward Knatchbull, 7th Baronet (1704-1789)

Inventory, 1885, p. 29, in the dining room;
Arthur T. Bolton, ‘Mersham le Hatch’, Country Life, 26 March 1921, photographed in the dining room, p. 371;
Inventory, 1926, p. 25, in the dining room;
H. Avray Tipping, English Homes, Late Georgian, 1760-1820, London, 1926, in situ, p.131;
Peter Thornton, The Furnishing of Mersham-le-Hatch, Part I, Apollo, April 1970, p.266, fig.2;
Christopher Hussey, English Country Houses, Mid Georgian 1760-1800, London, 1984, in situ, p.102.

We know Thomas Chippendale supplied Mersham with several pieces of coopered dining room equipment in 1769. Both the ‘neat Mahogany Plate Basket with a Brass Bow handle’ and ‘a large Mahogany Plate pail wt Brass hoops & handles’ are illustrated in Christopher Gilbert’s monograph on Chippendale, The Life and Works of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, Vol. II, p. 177, fig. 318, however, the present lot - now lacking its original stand - does not feature in the accounts. The form and distinctive lion mask handles were not uncommon in the 1760s with several documented examples surviving by Gillows, as well as a famous pair supplied by Chippendale to Dumfries House in 1759 and 1763 (see Gilbert, op. cit., pp.78-79, figs. 121-122).