Collectables
THE BACKSTORY ON AN INTRIGUING ITEM HOUSED AT THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA IN THE NATION’S CAPITAL.
silver kettle-cum-spirit lamp, by English silversmiths Rebecca Emes and Edward Barnard, was given to botanist Sir Joseph Banks by Queen Charlotte in 1813. One of the great treasures of the National Library of Australia in Canberra, it’s actually called a veilleuse théière, or night-light teapot, consisting of a small kettle with a burner underneath, so that warm tea and a soft light offer reassurance throughout the night.
The engraved inscription tells the tale. It reads, “This most judicious improvement of a comfort indispensibly necessary in a sick chamber was most graciously presented to Sir Joseph Banks by the Queen, when Her Majesty, accompanied by their Royal Highnesses, the Princesses Augusta and Mary, honoured his family with a visit at Spring Grove on Monday October the fourth, 1813.”
Banks, the botanist aboard Captain Cook’s first expedition to the Pacific and who first collected and described Australian plants for Europeans, was the formidable president of the Royal Society in London from 1778 until his death in 1820. By 1813, when this gift was made, Banks’s gout had confined him to a wheelchair. However, on the day of this presentation, he had provided the Queen and her daughters with a luncheon ending with a cranberry tart, peaches, nectarines, grapes, strawberries and plums from his own garden.
Collectors of silver are drawn by such things as the provenance of individual pieces, the armorials engraved on them and their inscriptions. If those inscriptions connect an object with a famous historical figure, especially a member of a royal family, interest is greatly increased.
The veilleuse théière came to the National Library as part of a collection assembled by famed art collector Sir Rex Nan Kivell, who bought it at auction in 1941. National Library of Australia, (02) 6262 1111, nla.gov.au