Dreweatt Neate Donnington Priory Salerooms
Lot 58
A rare and important Queen Anne walnut cistern tube stick barometer with Royal Society scale thermometer Attributed to Stephen Davenport or John Patrick, London, circa 1715. The ogee caddy top pediment with three giltwood ball finials above cavetto moulded cornice and rectangular herringbone border engraved silvered scales with brass setting pointer and annoted for summer and winter conditions and inscribed Fair if Rise and Foul if Fall, flanked by pilasters with gilt capitals and bases above cavetto moulded throat moulding with inverted acorn gilt pendant finials, the trunk applied with alcohol thermomer with (restored) paper scale calibrated from 0 at the top down to 90 and with annotations from Extream Cold to Extream Hot flanked by vertical cross-grain cavetto mouldings to sides and with half dome above waisted cylinder turned cistern cover also enclosing thermometer bulb and with conforming gilt pendant finial to base, 99cm high, B.C. Ref. 7. Illustrated in Banfield, Edwin BAROMETERS Stick or Cistern Tube page 32 and on the front cover. Also illustrated in Edward, Ralph DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH FURNITURE Vol. 1, page 11, fig. 4. Provenance: Thorpe & Foster Ltd, 49 West Street, Dorking advertised in APOLLO magazine, December 1973 from the collection of Mr R.A. Leckie. Stephen Davenport is recorded by Banfield as working Against the Distillers in High Holborn, near Drury Lane London 1720-37. A fragment of one of his adverts (included with the Lot) was found behind the cistern during restoration enabling a probable attribution to be made. However a remarkably similar instrument signed I. Patrick, London, currently housed at the National Maritime Museum is illustrated and described in Goodison, Nicholas English BAROMETERS 1680-1860 Part II Some Important Makers and Retailers page 202. These two instruments essentially only differ in the detail design of the pediments and the fact that the finials are made from gilt brass rather than giltwood on the National Maritime Museum example. The engraved decoration to the scales is essentially identical. Therefore it may be reasonable to surmise that Stephen Davenport may well have been the retailer of the current Lot which was supplied to him by John Patrick. A third similar unsigned instrument with an identical ogee caddy top and cistern cover to the current Lot but with break-arch scales and differing silvered scale thermometers to the trunk is illustrated and described in Claxton Stevens, Christopher and Whittington, Stewart 18TH CENTURY ENGLISH FURNITURE, THE NORMAN ADAMS COLLECTION, page 163. The Royal Society scale thermometer was devised by Robert Hook in 1664 and was calibrated to every degree representing an increase of 1/500 in volume of the thermometer liquid. The scale used the freezing point of water as the fixed point and was scaled from high to low with the increase of temperature. As the rate of expansion of the alcohol varied between instruments, each scale had to be individually made for the instrument. The current Lot has an accurately restored paper scale as the original had almost entirely worn away. Hooks original thermometer was adopted and became known as the standard of Gresham College and used by the Royal Society until 1709.
