A Rare Victorian Silver-Mounted Green or Amber Glass Novelty Claret-Jug
by Alexander Crichton, London, 1882

realistically modelled as a squirrel, resting on his back paws while using his front paws to hold a cast nut which acts as the spout, the hinged cover with two glass eyes, with textured shaped amber glass body and carved wood tail
24cm high

Provenance:
Almost certainly Sotheby's, Belgravia, 3 November 1977, lot 161 and by descent.

Literature:
J. Culme, The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, Jewellers and Allied Traders 1838-1914, Woodbridge, 1996, vol. I, p. 102.
J. B. Hawkins, "Alexander Crichton - Through the Drinking Glass", published online, p. 2.

Alexander Crichton was a Scottish silversmith who found fame creating charming novelty silver items such as the present claret-jug. He is believed to have been born in Edinburgh to a family with close connection to the silver industry but was to make his career in London where he is recorded as winning a £25 prize from the Goldsmiths’ Company for ‘presentations for designs, etc.’ (as recorded in the Art Journal, 1870 and quoted by J. Culme, The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, Jewellers and Allied Traders 1838-1914, Woodbridge, 1996, vol. I, p. 102.). Though he is known to have made interesting items through the 1870s, it must certainly be his whimsical novelty silver-mounted claret-jugs and scent-bottles which are his most famous legacy. By the time he started to imagine and produce these zoomorphic items, Crichton was in partnership with another silversmith called Charles John Curry, trading as Crichton & Curry, ‘designers, modellers and silversmiths’ at Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, London.

The production of these claret-jugs was to be very short-lived as the demand for them collapsed in the early years of the 1880s due to a financial downturn, so most of the known extant examples date to 1881 or, like the present example, 1882. Only 34 different forms are recorded by J. B. Hawkins in his online article "Alexander Crichton - Through the Drinking Glass". Hawkins notes that most of the designs are registered with the Patent Office but the squirrel is not.

The squirrel must rate as among the rarest form of these zoomorphic claret-jugs, Hawkins notes only two examples, one with a silver tail, previously owned by the Late Queen Mother (Hawkins, op cit., pl. 18) and the example sold at Sotheby’s, Belgravia in November 1977. While it is almost certain that the present examples and the one sold in 1977 are one and the same, unfortunately the family records do not confirm where it was acquired. It is clear that the 1970s was a fruitful time in the development of the family's collection so it seems likely that they acquired the jug either directly at the Sotheby’s sale or through the trade not long after the sale.