A Rare Pair of 18th Century Bucket Wine Coolers

By John Scofield

London 1790

Silver

Height: 19cm., 7.5in

Total Weight: 3078gr (98oz. 19dwt)

This is an extremely elegant pair of late 18th century George III ‘Bucket’ style wine coolers. They were made by arguably one of the greatest late 18th century English silversmiths, John Scofield. They are an extremely elegant design and it is even nicer that the coat of arms have been separately cast and applied to the body of the coolers which highlight their quality.

The arms are those of Smythe quartering the quarterly arms of Leighton and Owen impaling Townsend quartering Hare for Nicholas Owen Smythe Owen (1769-1804) of Condover Hall, Shropshire. He married at All Hallows, Tottenham, on 12 July 1790, Henrietta Jemima, daughter of James Townsend (1737-1787) of Bruce Castle, Tottenham, and his wife Henrietta (née Hare, 1745-1785).

The Owen family of Condover, Shropshire, extinct in the male line, descended from Richard ap Owen, third son of Owen ap Griffith of Llunllo. Thomas Owen of Concover, the last male descendant of this line, died unmarried in 1731, leaving his sister, Letitia Owen (d. 1755), his heir. She married Richard Mytton, and had a daughter, Anna Maria (1719-1750), who was the first wife of Sir Charlton Leighton, 3rd Bt (1715-1780) of Loton. One of their children, also Anna Maria (d. 1777), inherited from her grandmother, the said Letitia Owen, the estate of Condover. This Anna Maria Mytton married Nicholas Smythe. Their eldest son was the above-mentioned Nicholas Owen Smythe Owen (formerly Smythe) upon whose death without issue in 1804 Condover passed to his eldest sister’s son, Edward William Pemberton (1793-1863) who then changed his name to Edward William Smythe Owen.