The Hickstead Place Wassail bowl: A rare and impressive Elizabeth I/James I sycamore wassail bowl and cover, circa 1600 - 1610


The broad and domed lid topped by a ball and spire spice-cup finial, the cup raised on a baluster-knopped stem and a turned and spreading foot, the cup decorated all over with pyrographic roundels and intersecting segmental line, overall 26cm diameter x 42cm high
|Provenance:Reputedly sold 30 April 1951, by Graves, Son & Pilcher, amongst other property from Hickstead Place: included in a lot with 'six Chinese decorated bowls of various sizes' for the sum of three pounds and five shillingsPresumably purchased by F. A. Turner and lent to Horsham Museum 1951 to circa 1980Sold Christie's, Oak, Country Furniture, Folk Art and Works of Art, 3 November 1999, Lot 998 Sold Christie's, 'Syd Levethan: The Longridge Collection', 10 – 11 June 2010, Lot 1037 Literature:Mentioned as at Hickstead Place in The Sussex County Magazine, Vol. 10 (1936), p. 93Illustrated Edward H. Pinto, Treen and Other Wooden Bygones, p. 67, Fig. 29, and see pp. 50 - 51 Exhibited:The Horsham Museum, Horsham, Sussex, circa 1950 - 1980Hickstead Place in Twineham, Sussex still stands, its oldest parts dating to the 15th century. The manor of Twineham descended from father to son for more than two hundred years, and was then inherited by descendants, one after the other, without being sold. John Stapley inherited it in 1546 and William, son of the latter, in 1568. Two Johns followed, in 1602 and 1608 respectively. If the cup is indigenous, it was possibly made to mark one of these early 17th century occasions. None of the surviving wills of Stapley owners of Hickstead Place in the 17th century mention the cup specifically. Richard, the last of the Stapleys at Hickstead, died in 1762, leaving the manor to his elder daughter Martha, who four years later married James Wood. The latter died in 1806, and the property passed to their son James, at whose death without issue in 1831 Twineham passed to his nephew John son of John Wood, of Ockley in Keymer. His daughter Charlotte, who died before her father, married William Davidson of Muir House, Midlothian, and to him the manor came in 1877. At his death in 1916, Twineham passed to his daughter Miss Blanche Davidson.There was an antique furniture dealer of 58 East Street in Horsham in West Sussex called Fred Turner, who would have been well placed to buy the bowl when it came up for sale in 1951. An F. A. Turner was also assistant curator of Horsham Museum in the 1940s [Directory of Museums and Art Galleries in the British Isles (1948), p. 149]. It is presumably this man who was commemorated by the re-erection of a water pump at Horsham Museum, which bears a plaque reading 'this pump was re-erected in memory of F. A. TURNER / A member of Horsham Museum Society 1920-1981'.