Beschreibung:

[SHAKESPEARE, William (1564-1616)] A George III silver, mulberry wood and miniature portrait snuff box, English, 1792. Rectangular, the wooden cover carved with the Shakespeare coat of arms framed by fruiting mulberry branches above a mask of Shakespeare, wood panelled sides and base; silver lined interior, the inside cover inset with a portrait miniature of Shakespeare, ink on paper, after the Chandos portrait, within a bright-cut silver bezel, engraved 'William Shakspeare / Our Immortal Bard / Born 1563 Died 1615 / The Gift of the Honble J. Byng / To his Friend A. Bertie, 1792'; the base with applied oval silver panel engraved with the coat of arms, crest and motto VIRTUS ARIETE FORTIOR of Bertie. Provenance: 1. Hon. John Byng, later 5th Viscount Torrington (1743-1813), diarist. Byng's diaries record two visits to Stratford-upon-Avon, the first on 7 July 1785, during which he paid his 'obeisance at the shrine of the immortal bard', viewing Shakespeare's birthplace, purchasing two wooden souvenirs and resisting the urge to buy more: 'we also stopp'd to survey the many carvings and toys made of mulberry wood, a goblet of which I had nearly purchased; and allmost repent my aeconomy and abstinence' (Torrington Diaries (1934-8), I, 224-226); the present memento was offered in the wake of his second visit, on 3-4 July 1792, when he 'walked about the town in a Shakespearean reverie [and] looked into the mulberry shop; where the goods are most wretchedly executed' (op. cit. III, 152). 2. Lieutenant-General Albemarle Bertie, later 9th Earl of Lindsey (1744-1818). Bertie was a close friend of Byng's, and accompanied him on a tour of Lincolnshire in 1791, although Byng was not impressed with his style of travelling: 'The Colonel is not so well form'd for a traveller as I am ... he moves in state; trunks laden with dressing apparatus, with snuff, with books, from Shakespeare down to a Court calendar!' (op. cit. II, 392). On Byng's visit to Stratford in 1792, his impolite reception at the White Lion prompts him to regret Bertie's absence: 'When I toured with Col. B ... his figure and discontents were often of great service; and here they were much wanted'. A Shakespeare souvenir snuff box from the early decades of 'bardolatry'. The mulberry tree in the garden of Shakespeare's house at New Place was a significant point of pilgrimage for early tourists; after it was chopped down in the 1750s, the Stratford silversmith and entrepreneur Thomas Sharp (1725-1799), used the wood to produce the 'many carvings and toys made of Mulberry wood' on which Byng remarked – so many that even at the time there was a degree of cynicism about the provenance of the wood. Byng's disdainful reference to the quality of the goods in Sharp's 'mulberry shop' however makes it likely that he acquired the present snuff box from another, more skilled source. It is tempting to associate the portrait miniature of Shakespeare with Ozias Humphry (1742-1810), who made a crayon copy of the Chandos portrait in 1783 and whom Byng had commissioned in 1791 to make a pastel portrait of his son. [Offered with:] An oak portfolio carved with a portrait of Shakespeare after the Droeshout engraving below Shakespeare's lance and falcon crest, framed by oak leaves and acorns, leather-lined, 295 x 215mm. Attributed to William Perry, woodcarver and author of A Treatise on the identity of Herne's Oak (1867), and possibly made with wood from Herne's Oak, which is mentioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor.