HUGIJENOT ARTISTS DESIGNERS AND CRAYPSNEN IN GREAT ...

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produced portraits of eminent Huguenots. The only example known to date
of a commission by a fellow Huguenot craftsman, is the tea equipage made
by Paul de Lamerie as a wedding gift for the daughter of the Huguenot
jeweller Jacques Louis Berchere, Suzanne Judith, who married Jean Daniel
Boissier at St. Peter le Poor in April 1735. It consists of two tea
caddies, a matching sugar caddy, a cream jug, twelve tea spoons, a mote
spoon, two knives, and a pair of sugar flippers contained in a mahogany
box lined with red velvet and embellished with silver mounts (P1 .10).
The silver bears the arms of Boissier impaling Berchere, and the hail
marks, 1735_6.50
Whereas no English craftsmen are recorded as patronizing Huguenot
craftsmen, with the exception of taking Huguenot apprentices, it is
interesting to note that the Huguenots did also patronize English
craftsmen. Thus Frederick, Prince of Wales' Huguenot dancing master,
Monsieur Desnoyer, Jacob Bouverie and Charles Dartiquenave are recorded
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as clients of the goldsmith George Wickes.
Although the Huguenot craftsmen were appreciated by the nobility
and gentry, the native craftsmen reacted strongly against the intrusion.
When in 1678, Parliament was considering a bill to enable foreign
protestant craftsmen to exercise their trades in certain places and to
enter on a normal seven year apprenticeship, it was the court of the
Goldsmiths' Company who passed a resolution to oppose the bill. Again,
in 1711, fifty-three London goldsmiths signed a petition against the
intrusion of foreigners,
'that by admittance of neces& tons strangers whose desperate fortunes
obliged them to work at miserable rates, the representing members have
been forced to bestow much more time and labour in working up their
plate, than hath been the practice of former times.'52
In 1733, a similar complaint was taken up by Andrew Fulibottom in
the Gentleman's Magazine, 'Is it not a cruel case that a Tradesman shall
not be employed merely because he is an Englishman.' 53 By 17k5, the
Anti-Gailican Society was formed to 'promote the British Manufactures
to extend the Commerce of England, and discourage the introducing of
French modes and impose the importation of French connnodities.' It is
interesting to note that many of those involved in the Anti-Gallican
' Society actually employed second geation Huguenot craftsmen. Stephen
Theodore Janssen employed the goldsmith Delamain, of Huguenot descent,
in the production of Battersea enamels. Likewise Hogarth, while deeply
committed to a campaign against the French taste, willingly associated