In continuing the examination of loving-cups the comparison can be made between the early ornate Gothic type exemplified in the Leigh cup; the restrained and solid piece of craftsmanship in the Westbury cup; and the applied style of decoration, French in character, found in pieces from about 1670 for the next ten years or so. The Pepys cup is about 1677, and typifies this last period. There is among the York Corporation plate a silver-gilt cup, 17ⁱ/₂ inches high, with cover surmounted by a lion couchant. This “Turner” cup has the inscription: “_Ion̄es Turner serviens ad legem Civitatis Eborū Recordator hoc Majori et Communitati ejus de gratitudinis ergo dedit, 1679._” The hall-mark is London, 1679. There is a resemblance in this cup to the Pepys cup: it is finely decorated with acanthus leaves. In 1893 a copy of the Turner cup, with the lion transformed into the lion of England, and embellished with shields of the various Dukes of York, was presented to His Majesty King George by the citizens of York on the occasion of his marriage.
In 1677 Samuel Pepys was elected Master of the Clothworkers’ Company, to whom he presented this cup (illustrated), which is still used at their dinners.
Its description is as follows: Standing cup and cover, parcel gilt. Deep plain band round rim, below which is a chased laurel wreath. The rest of the cup is overlaid with an outer framework of pierced and embossed work of ornate character, which is not gilt. The design embraces foliated scrolls with griffin, and included are teazles and two rams, symbols of the Clothworkers’ Company. The cover is surmounted by a ram.
The cup bears an inscription: “_Samuel Pepys Admiralitati Angl: Secretis & Societ: Pannif: Lond: Mr. An. MDCLXXVII_,” and a monogram S. P., together with the arms of Pepys.
This piece belongs to the Charles II period, and is typical of the characteristic style of applied decoration, undoubtedly of French origin. This cup has the maker’s mark[3] T G or J G interlaced, and he evidently was an English craftsman working during the latter half of the Charles II period and during the short reign of James II. The vogue then disappeared.
English silver plate at the end of the seventeenth century is worthy of note, on account of its technique. A noticeable feature in this period of free chased work, in pieces with large leaves and fruit or figure subjects, is the bold manner in which the leaf springs from the collet of the foot. Among some of the most treasured objects of this late seventeenth-century outburst of fine craftsmanship are sconces and mirror frames, and especially large beakers and oviform vases and covers with floriated ornament richly chased. It was at that time that Grinling Gibbons the woodcarver revelled in his intricate flower and fruit pieces carved in the soft lime and chestnut woods. There is little doubt that the same artistic impulses were in the air. Side by side with the silversmith’s art were other fashions in furniture, in silk hangings, in costume, in the building and architecture of houses and the habits of the people who dwelt in them. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with so many civil disturbances it was inevitable that easily movable possessions such as plate were the first to be realized. It is not difficult to imagine from the remnants still remaining what the plate must have been like which graced the splendid banqueting halls of the days of Elizabeth. The massive flagons, such as that illustrated page 105, and the gleaming dishes and lordly plates rightly belong to an age when courtiers wore doublets richly sewn with pearls, when dreams of conquests in the New World set men’s minds aflame, when new trade routes were opened and great companies formed, when the sturdy spirit of independence established itself in these realms to take root and develop into world supremacy on the seas, and establish an abiding place in the council chambers of Europe, and when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and Kit Marlowe, and Edmund Spenser with inspired vision penetrated into the domain of romance and won enduring fame.