Paul de Lamerie
Encyclopedia
Paul de Lamerie was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 silversmith
Silversmith
A silversmith is a craftsperson who makes objects from silver or gold. The terms 'silversmith' and 'goldsmith' are not synonyms as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are or were largely the same but the end product varies greatly as does the scale of objects created.Silversmithing is the...

. The Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

 describes him as the "greatest silversmith working in England in the 18th century". Though his mark raises the market value of silver, his output was large and not all his pieces are outstanding. The volume of work bearing De Lamerie's mark makes it almost certain that he subcontracted
Subcontractor
A subcontractor is an individual or in many cases a business that signs a contract to perform part or all of the obligations of another's contract....

 orders to other London silversmiths before applying his own mark.

Early and private life

De Lamerie was born in 's-Hertogenbosch in the United Provinces
Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...

 (now in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

). He was the son of a minor French nobleman, Paul Souchay de la Merie. His Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 parents had left France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 following the Edict of Fontainebleau
Edict of Fontainebleau
The Edict of Fontainebleau was an edict issued by Louis XIV of France, also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Edict of Nantes of 1598, had granted the Huguenots the right to practice their religion without persecution from the state...

 in 1685. His father became an officer in the army of William III of Orange and moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1689 in the Glorious Revolution
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...

, but died a pauper in 1735.

He married Louisa Juliott on 11 February 1717. They had two sons and four daughters together; three daughters survived. He died in London and was buried at St Anne's Church, Soho.

Career

In August 1703, De Lamerie became the apprentice of a London goldsmith
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...

 of Huguenot origin, Pierre Platel. De Lamerie opened his own workshop in 1713 and was appointed goldsmith to George I in 1716. He worked in partnership with Ellis Gamble - formerly the apprentice master of William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

 - between 1723 and 1728. His early work is in the simple Queen Anne styles, following classical French models, but Lamerie is noted for his elaborate Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 style from the 1730s, particularly the richly-decorated works of an unidentified craftsman, the Maynard Master.

His customers included Tsarinas Anna
Anna of Russia
Anna of Russia or Anna Ivanovna reigned as Duchess of Courland from 1711 to 1730 and as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740.-Accession to the throne:Anna was the daughter of Ivan V of Russia, as well as the niece of Peter the Great...

 and Catherine, Count Aleksey Bobrinsky
Bobrinsky
Counts Bobrinsky or Bobrinskoy are a Russian noble family descending from Catherine the Great's natural son by Count Grigory Orlov - Aleksey Grigorievich Bobrinsky .-The first count:...

, Sir Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....

, the Earl of Ilchester
Stephen Fox-Strangways, 1st Earl of Ilchester
Stephen Fox-Strangways, 1st Earl of Ilchester PC was a British peer and Member of Parliament.Ilchester was the son of Sir Stephen Fox and his second wife Christiana Hope. Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, was his younger brother and Charles James Fox his nephew...

, the Earl of Thanet
Earl of Thanet
Earl of the Isle of Thanet, in practice shortened to Earl of Thanet, was a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1628 for Nicholas Tufton, 1st Baron Tufton. He had already succeeded as second Baronet of Hothfield in 1631 and been created Baron Tufton, of Tufton in the County of Sussex,...

, Viscount Tyrconnel
John Brownlow, 1st Viscount Tyrconnel
John Brownlow, 1st Viscount Tyrconnel KB , known as Sir John Brownlow, 5th Baronet, from 1701 to 1718, was a British Member of Parliament....

, the Duke of Bedford
Duke of Bedford
thumb|right|240px|William Russell, 1st Duke of BedfordDuke of Bedford is a title that has been created five times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1414 in favour of Henry IV's third son, John, who later served as regent of France. He was made Earl of Kendal at the same time...

, and other members of the English upper classes. He also worked for John V of Portugal before losing favour to the Germains in Paris. Amongst his production to the Portuguese Court was a huge solid silver bath tub lost in the great 1755 Lisbon earthquake
1755 Lisbon earthquake
The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake, was a megathrust earthquake that took place on Saturday 1 November 1755, at around 9:40 in the morning. The earthquake was followed by fires and a tsunami, which almost totally destroyed Lisbon in the Kingdom of Portugal, and...

.

He served on the committees of the Goldsmiths' Company but did not become its prime warden. He served as a captain and then major in the Westminster volunteer association.

External links

  • Paul de Lamerie
  • http://www.christies.com/features/2010-may-the-greatest-goldsmith-732-1.aspx
  • http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-four-georges-notes-on-english-domestic-silver/
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