Each of amphora form raised on square plinths, with bifurcated handles cast with guilloché and berried laurel andflanked by swan heads at lower handle terminals, cast and chased with mythological scenes, one depicting Bacchus and Ariadne with dancing bacchantes and attendants, above satyr masks and vines, the other with Ceres in a serpent-drawn chariot with attendants bearing fruits of the harvest, above horned and bearded masks with wheat swags, each on a finely matted ground, the handles chased with laurel and paterae, fluted neck rising to an egg-and-dart rim, removable collars and liners, marked on sides and on collars and liners, and numbered, the base rims engraved 'No. 5 Published as the Act directs by Storr and Mortimer 13 New Bond Street, London"
12³⁄₄ in. (32.3 cm.) high
237.8 oz. (7,395.5 gr.)

Acquired from Spink & Son, Ltd., London, 13 November 1967.

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Lot Essay

The Triumph of Bacchus frieze on this pair of wine coolers is derived from a late 2nd-century Roman sarcophagus in the Vatican Museum, engravings of which were published by E. Q. Visconti in Museo Pio-Clementio, between 1782 and 1802 (see D. Udy, "Piranesi's 'Vasi,' the English Silversmith and his Patrons," Burlington Magazine, December 1978, pp. 828-29).
Looking to antiquity for inspiration, designers including John Flaxman used engravings of Roman archaeological discoveries published by Piranesi, Visconti and others. It is known, for example, that the Storr workshop owned a number of Piranesi's engravings, and it seems almost certain that the workshop, or the firm's retailer Rundell's, also had copies of Visconti's work.
Other wine coolers in this style include a pair in white silver in the Jerome and Rita Gans Collection at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and a single example at the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Joseph Bliss, The Gerome and Rita Gans Collection of English Silver on Loan to The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, n.d., pp. 188-190). A pair of silver-gilt Storr wine coolers of similar design sold Christie's, New York, 21 June 2012, lot 1108.