QIANLONG PERIOD (1736-1795)

"...remarkable for their size and beauty..."
SIR JOHN HUSSEY-DELAVAL, 1ST BARON DELAVAL (1728-1808)
John Hussey-Delaval was born a second son but by the latter decades of his life was master of Doddington in Lincolnshire, Ford Castle and Seaton Delaval in Northumberland, Claremont in Surrey and magnificent quarters in London, first at Grosvenor House in Millbank, then Hanover Square and finally New Cavendish Place. The extravagance and reckless behaviour of his rakish older brother, Sir Francis Blake Delaval, led his family to turn over the management of their estates to John in 1755 and by 1771 John was able to buy out the remaining interests of both his older and younger brothers in those properties as well as in the Hartley Colliery and the Royal Northumbrian Glassworks, the sources of the family's wealth. Delaval was a member of Parliament for Berwick on Tweed intermittently from 1754 to 1786; he was created an English baronet in 1786. His seat was Seaton Delaval Hall (now a National Trust property), a 1720s masterpiece by Sir John Vanbrugh. Doddington Hall was also a favorite residence. Delaval updated the interiors of the Elizabethan house, bringing modernizing improvements like double-glazed windows. It had passed down through his mother's family and is notable for never having left the family's hands from its inception in 1595 until today.
LORD DELAVAL'S CHINESE PORCELAINS
Delaval was a keen furnisher and renovator and almost constantly engaged in remodeling and decorating projects at his various properties. He kept detailed inventories as well as accounts of his quite significant expenditures on furniture, including correspondence with John Cobb. (See L. Wood, Furniture for Lord Delaval: Metropolitan and Provincial, Furniture History, Vol 26 (1990) pp.198-234.)
Recorded in the Seaton Delaval Papers, Northumberland Collection Services DE.31-2, is Lord Delaval's 2 May 1778 purchase from the collection of Mr. Lever (through Thomas Waring) of a pair of Chinese vases "remarkable for their size and beauty." They cost 30 guineas, a huge sum at the time, and may have been planned for the Cavendish Place house, which Delaval is known to have displayed sumptuous Chinese porcelains.
LORD DELAVAL AND ROBERT ADAM
Delaval may have met Robert Adam through Adam's great patron, the Duke of Northumberland. He employed Adam for his London houses at Hanover Square, Conduit Street and Portland Place as well as for his country villa Milburn in Esher, Surrey, the drawings for which survive in the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum. He also commissioned Adam for Gothick-style alterations to his medieval and Elizabethan Ford Castle at Berwick-upon-Tweed.
'SOLDIER' VASES
The tale of Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), the porcelain-obsessed Elector of Saxony and King of Poland who traded Frederick the Great a regiment of dragoons for a collection of Chinese porcelain, is well-known. Eighteen over-sized floor vases were included in this collection (some still on view in Dresden today), and ever since towering Chinese porcelain vases have been known as 'dragoon vases' (dragonervasen) or 'soldier vases'. Extremely difficult to make, to pack and to ship, these massive vases were destined for Europe's elites, where they stood guard in ballrooms and great halls of palaces and country houses. The Jesuit traveler to Jingdezhen, Père d'Entrecolles, recorded in his famous letters, "...Urns above three Foot high without the Lid...out of twenty-four eight only suceeded...These Works were bespoke by the Merchants of Canton for the European trade."
THE PHOENIX IN CHINESE ART
The stately phoenix on the present pair are perhaps the most exalted of all Chinese birds, symbolic of sun and warmth for summer and harvest and closely associated with the Empress - though this was likely lost on Lord Delaval and his coterie, who would have viewed them simply as captivatingly exotic Asian birds.