Pair of chimney ornaments
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Manufacturer
Burton & Co.
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Detail
Gilt-brass, now electro-gilded
Height: 28 cm
English (London), design registered 1 April 1810
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Marked
‘Pub’d as y Act directs / by Tho. Burton & Co / 9 Rupert St / Bloomsbury/ April 1 1810’ (on the back of each ornament, see right)
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Notes
The design for these ornaments was protected under the Garrard Act.
Identical ornaments are found on a register grate inside a fireplace supplied in 1810 by the Vulliamys to the Earl of Bridgewater, now in the Bow room at Buckingham Palace; see Geoffrey de Bellaigue, ‘The Vulliamys’ Chimney Pieces’, Furniture History XXXIII (1997), pp. 188-216, fig. 8. Further examples are on a register grate at Badminton.
No further information about Burton & Co. has been found to date, but the firm’s work might have something in common with that of the ‘Stove and Lamp Manufacturers’ W & S Summers, of 105 New Bond Street, London, who themselves were connnected to the designer and cabinet-maker George Bullock, and who made register grates.
A pair of ornaments of the same pattern attached to a fireplace infill, but lacking the serpent’s, is in English Heritage architecture storage at Wrest Park (information from Will Iselin, 2 March 2022).