A large pair of Japanese Imari octagonal section baluster vases and covers
£14,000
Auction: 29 September 2001 at 12:00 BST
Description
late 17th/early 18th century, the domed lids with cockerel and chick surmount profusely decorated with underglaze blue, iron red and gilt, the lid with four Karashishi, between peony scrolls over butterfly decorated panels over swollen bases with Karashishi decorated shoulders and alternate panels of underglaze blue flowers with dense foliage and panels of peony sprays, the base decoration similar (4)
88.5cm overall
Footnote
Sold for £14,000
Provenance: Houston House, Renfrewshire
The Spiers family, Elderslie House and Houston House
Our forthcoming Fine Antiques Sale includes a suite of associated Scottish Regency oak furniture and various other pieces from Houston House including a pair of large late 17th /early 18th century Imari urns, illustrated above.
The fortune of the Speirs family of Elderslie and Houston was founded by Alexander Speirs, a Glasgow tobacco lord. Alexander was born in 1714, the son of John Speirs, an Edinburgh merchant and Isobel Tweedie, daughter of the Lord Provost of Peebles. He made his fortune trading in Virginian tobacco and was one of the founders of the Glasgow Arms Bank. In the words of a contemporary 'Alexander Speirs was one of the four young men who by general consent first made Glasgow an important seat of trade … [and] he became the most extensive and the most prosperous of these old magnates'. He married Mary Buchanan of Auchintorlie and was a significant benefactor of the Merchant's House in Glasgow, which houses portraits of himself and his wife.
In 1767 Alexander had acquired the small 265 acre estate of Elderslie which included a modest farmhouse built on the site of the old tower house. Elderslie was the ancient seat of the Wallace family having been given to Sir Malcolm Wallace, the father of William Wallace, in the 13th century. When Speirs united all his estates as a single barony, entailing them for future generations, he chose to give this combined estate and his new house the historic name of Elderslie.
According to legend William was captured whilst hiding in an oak tree on the Elderslie estate. 'Wallace's oak', as it came to be known, stood about a hundred and fifty yards from the house and was protected by the Speirs family until it was blown down in the gales of 1856. At this time it was described as 'a melancholy torso, bald and frail, with its limbs hacked off by relic hunters, like Wallace's by the hangman'. The same writer records that it was taken to the Speirs' home and parts of it were made into furniture.
Houston House and its estate was bought by Archibald, Alexander Speirs' second son and heir, in 1788. This historic seat and estate of the Houstons of that Ilk had been sold soon after the male line died out in 1751 to James Macrae, the Governor of Madras, and Macrae's heir sold it to Archibald.
The Speirs' principal seat throughout the 19th century was, however, the aforementioned Elderslie House, Elderslie had been built to a simplified version of a Robert Adam design between 1776 and 1782, and extended in 1821 by George Douglas. It is likely that the furniture being offered in this sale was provided at the time of these alterations. Sadly, Elderslie was demolished in 1924.
None of the furniture offered from Houston House can be firmly linked to a particular Scottish cabinetmaker, although several can be considered. The only cabinetmaker's name which appears in the limited surviving accounts of the Spiers family is that of the Glasgow firm Cleland and Jack, in 1810 and 1811. Cleland and Jack made the furniture for William Stark's now demolished Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, in 1809 and were also employed extensively by the Maxwells of Pollock House, which is also situated to the west of Glasgow. Little else of his output is known other than by the celebrated engraving of his Warehouse in the Trongate, Glasgow. Stylistically, William Trotter of Edinburgh, who dominated the Scottish furnishing market for the first half of the 19th century, particularly amongst the aristocracy and landed gentry, can be more or less confidently associated with all of the pieces. A third, but rather less likely, candidate would be James Mein of Kelso who certainly often worked in oak and elm (see the pollard oak table sold Phillips Edinburgh 29 September 1995 Lot 341), and numbered the Duke of Roxburghe and the Earl of Haddington amongst his clients.
The use of indigenous timber for this associated suite of furniture must be significant and it is tempting to relate it to the Elderslie oak. The Spiers family had gone out of their way not only to acquire the Wallace oak and the ancient forest of Elderslie but also to take its name for their estate. The use of local timber was fashionable at the time, popularised in particular by George Bullock, who made oak furniture of a Romantic nature for Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and of a highly sophisticated form for the Duke of Atholl. Similarly, the Regency era saw a spate of furniture made from wood with historical or biographical associations, such as the 'Tam o'Shanter ' chair made to commemorate Robert Burns from the rafters of Old Alloway Kirk, Walter Scott's 'Robroyston' chair, the cabinets and chairs made from the Wellington oak at Waterloo, or the various chairs and tables made from timber from both the Trafalgar and the Bellerophon. If the furniture from Houston dates from the 1820s, as it appears, is it possible that the Spiers family asked their cabinet maker to use parts of the Wallace oak that had been 'hacked off' before it fell down?
AH Millar Castles and Mansions of Renfrewshire Glasgow 1889
JO Mitchell The Wallaces of Elderslie Transactions of the Archaeological Society of Glasgow 1889
JO Mitchell The Two Elderslies The Glasgow Herald 13th September 1884
Clive Wainwright et. al. George Bullock Cabinet Maker Blairman & Sons 1988
Celine Blair and David Jones 'Furnishing the Hunterian Museum' Regional Furniture V 1991
Francis Bamford Dictionary of Edinburgh Furniture Makers 1660-1840 Furniture History Society XIX 1983
Society of Writers to her Majesty's Signet Review and Accounts 1993 and 1994
'An Anthology of Regional Furniture with Maker's Identification' Regional Furniture VII 1993
Speirs of Elderslie MSS