CIRCA 1765, ONE POSSIBLY DECORATED IN THE WORKSHOP OF JAMES GILES (1718-1780)

James Giles (1718-80) was the son of a Huguenot refugee from Nîmes, and the owner of one of the most important and prolific ceramic and glass decorating workshops of 18th-century London. Based for most of his career on fashionable Cockspur Street, what is now the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square, he was renowned for producing exquisitely decorated luxury objects to satisfy the demands of the most discerning consumers, from the author and diarist Horace Walpole and the artist George Stubbs to the playwright Richard Sheridan and the Dukes of Northumberland and Marlborough.

Whilst little is known of the artists who worked for Giles decorating such wares, the present scent bottle embodies all the stylistic traits most readily associated with his work, from the gentle pastel shades and sprigs of flowers to the subtle combination of enamel and gilding. It is highly likely that the present facetted blue glass bottle was supplied to Giles by William Parker from his warehouse on Fleet street from whom Giles is know to have brought large quantities of such wares throughout the 1760s and 1770s.