neil guthrie
LightNews LightNews
banner
nguthrie.bsky.social
neil guthrie
@nguthrie.bsky.social
2K followers 340 following 1.4K posts
Collector. Antiquary. The Material Culture of the Jacobites (2014). Guthrie’s Guide to Better Legal Writing (2017, 2021). Trustee, George R Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art
Posts Replies Media Videos
nguthrie.bsky.social
Gold ring with silver, enamel, diamonds and ruby (possibly Italy, c1760), with Matthew Holder, London (£8,750) #c18th #c18 #18thc
The bezel is 'finely modelled with a black-and-white enamelled mask, the features animated by rose-cut diamond eyes and a small ruby set into the open mouth. The head is framed by a serrated gold collet and flanked by silver foliate clusters each set with a further rose-cut diamond. The shank is composed of high-carat gold, formed as asymmetrical rococo scrolls with pierced and chased detailing throughout. The enamel remains entirely original and unrestored. The reverse of the bezel is open, revealing white enamel engraved with faint traces of an original inscription. Though now largely worn, it would likely have borne a concealed love sentiment, comparable to the formula Je cache mes amours (“I mask my love”), found on related rings of mid-18th-century manufacture'
November 27, 2025 at 11:02 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Blue glass decanter (c1765-70) decorated in the London workshop of James Giles, at Bonhams, London (est. £3,000-5,000) #c18th #c18 #18thc
Catalogue entry: 'Of shouldered form in deep blue glass, cut all over with diamond facets with a band of square facets to the shoulder, richly gilt with a mosaic pattern, 24cm high'
November 26, 2025 at 11:08 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Owl in white porcelain (Chelsea, c1748-50), at Bonhams, London (est. £20,000-30,000) - right at the top of my Christmas wish list! #c18th #c18 #18thc
Naturalistically modelled in great detail, its talons firmly gripping the irregular rocky base upon which it stands. There is a less finely modelled polychrome example, made at the Bow factory (c1755-60), in the collection of the George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto https://emuseum.gardinermuseum.com/objects/744/owlet?ctx=150bdb9aa7fde6ef199bb310a3abb8ef762370e7&idx=0
November 25, 2025 at 11:12 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Henry Moreland, chiaroscuro portrait of a girl holding a candle, engraved by Richard Purcell (c1760), with Grosvenor Prints, London, £320 #c18th #c18 #18thc
Mezzotint. 355 x 255mm (14 x 10"), large margins. Nicks in edges of margins.
November 24, 2025 at 11:11 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Oval tray depicting Apollo dancing w/ the Muses (Doccia, c1750-55), sold for €35,000 (below est. of €40,000-60,000, but still) at Bonhams/Cornette de St Cyr, Paris, with a piece of Doccia (c1760) I bought earlier this year for a LOT less & like better #c18th #c18 #18thc
Catalogue entry: 'Of lobed shape with a rim composed of alternating white and gold dentils, the border edged in gilt and apple green and decorated with six polychrome floral sprays of which three are beribboned, the well decorated with a scene showing Apollo and the Nine Muses within purple scrollwork borders and gilt laurel swags, 32cm diam. (museum restoration)' White rococo dish with wavy green painted decoration
November 23, 2025 at 11:23 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Alexis-Simon Belle, portrait of 'James III and VIII', the Old Pretender, at Artcurial Paris (est. €6,000-8,000) #c18th #c18 #18thc #Jacobite
Three-quarter length oval portrait of the bewigged Pretender in armour with Garter sash.
November 22, 2025 at 11:21 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Tureen and cover in the shape of a bunch of asparagus (Chelsea, c1755), at Bonhams, London (est. £8,000-12,000) #c18th #c18 #18thc
Naturalistically modelled and coloured as a bunch of asparagus spears in shades of green and puce, tied with brown raffia bands at each end, the stem of one spear forming the handle, 19cm long, red anchor marks, numeral 65 to tureen and 48 to cover
November 21, 2025 at 12:15 PM
nguthrie.bsky.social
For your next tea party: hot-water urn by Matthew Boulton (Sheffield plate, c1820), with Nelson & Nelson, NYC, US$3,850. Longish #c18th #c18 #18thc
Bellied bowl with half-gadrooning leaf-mounted and wrapped reeded bracket side handles; patera-mounted reeded horizontal spout with scallop-shell tap mounted to leaf-wrapped scrolls. Cover domed with pineapple finial. Knopped support and domed foot with gadrooned rim. Base square with leafing scroll-mounted corner paw supports. Rims gadrooned and interspersed with scallop shells.
November 20, 2025 at 11:13 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Delft plaque in the shape of a birdcage (c1760), passed at Christie's, NYC last month (est. US$8,000-12,000). I'm sure you could buy it at the low end of the estimate for me
Polychrome plaque in blue and white with yellow and green, in the shape of a bird in a cage with drawn blue curtains that make it look like a ten, a scene of a lady and gent in a garden below and a lady in a garden on the lid of the cage
November 19, 2025 at 11:13 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
John Polidori, The Vampyre, as it first appeared in the New Monthly Magazine (1819), sold at Bonhams, London in October for £16,640 incl. premium #c18th #c18 #18thc (long)
Slim volume in contemporary calf, rebacked, gilt spine with red morocco title label, lightly rubbed. With Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein on Netfliex now and Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride on the way, is it time for a film version of this? Would be interesting to see a more Gothic/Romantic and less Victorian vampire, also shorn of the Hollywood trappings Last page of prefatory material and opening chapter, with attribution to Lord Byron
November 18, 2025 at 11:51 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
'Teaplant' coffee pot (Chelsea, c1745-49) which has sagged in the kiln. Even with that, some small cracks and minor discolouration, priced at £35,000 with E&H Manners, London #c18th #c18 #18thc
White porcelain coffee pot with lid and raised sprigs of teaplant (hence the name of the pattern, but not called that in the 18C). Slightly slope resulting from mistakes or accidents in the firing process. There is a non-sagging example on the block at Bonhams, London on 1 December (est. £12,000-15,000 but they'll be expecting more)
November 17, 2025 at 11:36 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Enjoying this, @carolinemccaff.bsky.social!
Cover of Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth's new biography of the collector, antiquary and philanthropist Lady Charlotte Schreiber, depicting The Music Lesson (now in the V&A), a Chelsea porcelain figure of an amorous young man and woman seated beneath an exuberantly flowering (apple?) tree. He has one arm draped around her shoulder and is ostensibly teaching her how to finger the recorder she is blowing, while her right hand rests lightly on his knee. A lamb is perched on her lap and another one looks up from the ground below. On either side of the book, some Chelsea leaf-shaped trays of my own
November 16, 2025 at 1:07 PM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Here endeth the travel snaps! Tiepolo altarpieces in the Residenz chapel and the still-producing winecellar that runs underneath the whole palace. Würzburg c18th #c18 #18thc
One of two large altarpieces on the sides of the chapel, flanked by twisty columns. The other large altarpiece,similar columns Huge wooden barrels Metal tanks
November 15, 2025 at 5:07 PM
nguthrie.bsky.social
The mirror room, Residenz, Würzburg #c18th #c18 #18thc
A concoction of gilt rococo tendrils framing mirrors on all surfaces of the room. The panelling and furniture of most other rooms in the Residenz had been removed to safety and were reinstalled after the war, but the mirrors in this room were too heavy to be moved. The heat from Allied bombs in WWII actually melted the glass and scorched the woodwork, so this is an entire reconstruction. The Tiepolo staircase withstood the bombs (and a 19C fire), defying the sceptics who thought Balthasar Neumann's huge vault would collapse shortly after construction
November 14, 2025 at 12:30 PM
nguthrie.bsky.social
The Emperor Hall with Tiepolo's frescos of the wedding of Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrice of Burgundy, Residenz, Würzburg #c18th #c18 #18thc
Magnificent, but not as impressive as the staircase with its dramatic progression and dizzying perspective. Here, the Bishop of Würzburg blesses the kneeling couple
November 13, 2025 at 11:48 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
The White Hall, Residenz, Würzburg #c18th #c18 #18thc
Delicate rococo plasterwork of dragons, birds and putti on a ceiling above similarly elaborate overdoors
November 12, 2025 at 11:26 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
GB Tiepolo's frescos of the 4 continents in Würzburg were the principal objective of my south German tour & did not disappoint. Copious but sublimely controlled, magnificent colour, pure theatre #c18th #c18 #18thc (check the alt, @brophylevey.bsky.social !)
I can't do better than quote the elegant prose of Sir Michael Levey in Painting in Eighteenth-Century Venice (1959; 1994): 'No photographs unfortunately can give a proper conception of the ceiling as a whole, nor of the effect on the visitor slowly climbing the staircase as the vast fresco gradually expands before him. [...] Nothing less than the four Continents of the world are assebled to do homage to the reigning Prince-Bishop, Carl Philipp von Greiffenklau, whose ermine-draped portrait is upheld by putti while Fame trumpets his name to the ends of the earth. The extraordinary apotheosis of this petty and unimpressive person, one of a long line of Prince-Bishops whom the world has forgotten, is a triumph of sentiment over reason. So absurd, indeed, is it to suppose that the Continents would ever pay any attention whatsoever to Carl Philipp von Greiffenklau that the conception is almost imaginative. [...] Tiepolo's felicitous touch ... [keeps] the whole vast scheme fresh and lively and marvellously effortless. Never again could even Tiepolo express himself with such exuberance and enchanted virtuosity. Given the globe to create, his imagination expanded globally. Such an achievement could happen only once.'
November 11, 2025 at 2:31 PM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Johann Zick, study for a ceiling depicting the history of the bishopric of Speyer (1752), which looks strangely Futurist or Cubist, especially from a distance. Museum für Franken, Würzburg #c18th #c18 #18thc
Study for an allegorical/historical ceiling with an oddly geometric pattern radiating from the centre that suggests early 20th-century modernism
November 10, 2025 at 10:34 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Giambattisto Tiepolo, preparatory study for the huge fresco in the Kaisersaal in the Residenz of Apollo leading Beatrice of Burgundy to the emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) (c1751), Museum für Franken, Würzburg #c18th #c18 #18thc
Apollo in his chariot, floating on sun-diffused clouds, brings an allegory of the county of Burgundy to her bridegroom, the genius imperii or personification of the Empire. The heiress of Burgundy married the emperor in Würzburg in 1154
November 9, 2025 at 12:23 PM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Pair of silver tureens (Breslau, c1792-93) in the window of an antique shop (fortunately closed for the day) in Bamberg #c18th #c18 #18thc
Very tall neo-classical tureens in the window of a fancy antiques dealer on the main drag of Bamberg Very tall neo-classical tureens in the window of a fancy antiques dealer on the main drag of Bamberg
November 8, 2025 at 12:46 PM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Doorknob (c1720-30) in the municipal historical museum, Bamberg #c18th #c18 #18thc
The face of a jolly little chappie rendered in bronze for a Bamberg burgher's front door
November 7, 2025 at 11:42 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Why be a bishop if you can be a prince-bishop? Here, the very princely reception hall of the palace of the secular and ecclesiastical rulers of Bamberg up to the end of the Empire (not that far in the future when this room was completed in 1709) #c18th #c18 #18thc
Black and white marble floor and flamboyant rococo stoves for heating, large portraits, huge crystal chandeliers, frescoed ceiling. Not spiritual in the least! One of the marble stoves, with a black base and exuberant white putti, allegorical figures and military trophies above, flanked by (quite bad) portraits of past prince-bishops
November 6, 2025 at 11:58 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Four heads of putti (c1760), Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg #c18th #c18 #18thc
Four carved and painted wooden heads of babies with wings on their shoulders, mounted on a wall. Two look rather bilious.
November 5, 2025 at 11:34 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
St Notburga with the miraculous sickle which remained suspended in the air to allow her to skive off work in order to feed the poor with the bread she holds in her apron (Munich, c1775-80), Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg #c18th #c18 #18thc
Polychrome (well, hands and face - her dress, footwear and hat are entirely gilt) wooden figure, almost life-sized, holding a sickle aloft and with an apron full of bread rolls. Notburga, pious Tyrolean peasant girl, wasn't canonised until 1862, but venerated since the Middle Ages
November 4, 2025 at 11:16 AM
nguthrie.bsky.social
Harlequin costume (German, #c18th #c18 #18thc), Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
Wool jacket and trousers with inlaid patchwork in yellow, white green and red with animals embroidered in wool and silk
November 3, 2025 at 11:17 AM