Roughly 3" probably christening cup. Heraldic device, form and even mark all seem to point to Colonial, but I can’t find the mark AL. Purchased in New England from a prominent Maine americana collection. Thought maybe Andrew Lang.
The maker’s mark is identical to the mark of the London silversmith Aaron Lestourgeon, active 1771 to some time after 1781. See my entry for him at London Makers Marks - AK-AQ. So possibly made by him and exported without being hallmarked.
Phil
I think it’s a tankard (cann), an occasional gift. Measurements, please.
He said it was roughly 3". I’ve got three tankards, and not one of them is less than 5" tall. Christening cup sounds right.
Given Phil is right, and he usually is, this is Aaron Lestourgeon’s third mark registered in London in 1771 and the first without William who, it is generally supposed was his father, also a silversmith.
Aaron established a solid reputation as a tea caddy specialist and examples of his work show up from time to time often with four-figure prices.
Other example of gill mugs by him, sometimes referred to as christening mugs for which they were used as gifts, I have not found.
If anybody can, it would be interesting to compare the style especially the handle only partly visible in the picture.
The crest is a vol: a heraldic symbol of two outstretched bird’s wings, connected at the shoulders, but without the body of the bird in the middle. The word “vol” is French for “flight”. It was once popular in crests, more so in Germany than France where this family hails from although it is also the crest of Thalamy, a small town in the Haute Dordogne exactly where many Huguenot families came from.
But perhaps not the Lestourgeons, who, according to family biographer Bushnell, arrived in Holland from Caen, Normandy, and thence to London and thence to New York and Boston.
See “The two Charles Lestourgeons : surgeons of Cambridge, Mass. their Huguenot ancestors and their descendants” by William D Bushell 1871-1949. Published 1936.
The claimed direct common ancestor between the maker and the American medics is Thomas Lestourgeon a watchmaker established in London in 1711.
We note, given this was a contemporary engraving, the donor was I V. Might this have been a pun on his name?
So who was I B? Because if we can figure that out we can figure out why the maker put his mark on an item, he was prohibited from making any profit from in the UK, or even recovering the cost of the silver unless he sent it to the guild for assay?
The temptation is to conclude this was family gifting – or extended family given the common ancestor was in the early to mid 17th century.
And what is the thing that looks like an elongated stylized P or sickle stuck in the middle where the bird’s missing body should be?
Possible a pun on the donor’s name also punned by the heraldic word meaning flight in French?
Summary: There were Lestourgeons both sides of the Atlantic, In London they were watchmakers and goldsmiths and in the Americas surgeons. This mug was almost certainly made by Aaron and it may have been sent over to the Americas and possibly to somebody whose initials were IV who gifted it to someone whose initials were IB, one or both of whom, may have hailed from southeast of Limoges and whose common ancestors were driven out of there by Louis’s breach, he called it a repeal, of the Treaty of Nantes.
I think if we knew what that long-handled sickle thingy in the midst of the voled wings was we’d be able to figure it out.
Christopher Wilson
Guildhall Antiques
Toronto.
Just in case anyone is tempted to presume the I B on the little cup is an ancestor of the author William Done Bushnell, they should probably forget about it. John Bushnell, forebear of the Saybrook Conn. Bushnells whose children included David, who actually invented both submarines and underwater mines for the Continental Army and four times great uncle of David P Bushnell whose binocular company was created in 1948 seems to have no connection with the Lestourgeons.
Bushnells are a Berkshire, UK family of Irish forebears. Like many others they left England just before the English civil war got ramped up and stuck to farming and inventing things. I can find nothing to hook them up with French surgeons or Huguenot silversmiths in London.
Which is a pity because the last time a former Parisien got interested in somebody connected with US submarines, she invented 'cell phones without quite realizing she had and became the definitive pinup gal before the Hayes Commission told her to cover up. I refer, of course, to Hedy Lemarr star of that other sought after silver, the screen.
CRWW