Lot 857:
Sold for £3,000 hammer
Estimate £3,000-£4,000
A large 1614 bronze mortar, by Thomas Carter (d. 1619), Whitechapel Foundry, London, inscribed beneath the rim ‘WILLIAM CARTER MADE ME FOR JAMES BILL 1614’ and with the trefoil mark and the initials TB for Thomas Bartlet (d. 1632), the waist with a broad band of tracery topped by alternating septfoils and trifoils, spreading base, diameter 34cm x height 26cm.
Thomas Carter
Another mortar inscribed ‘William Carter made me for George Beere 1615’ is noted in ‘Comminution and English Bell-Metal Mortars, c.1400-1850’ by JK Crellin and DA Hutton (p279) and is described as ‘the earliest dated example of the Whitechapel septfoil and trifoil pattern’. This mortar, made for James Bill, is earlier by a year.
The 1615 mortar also bore the mark of William Carter’s foreman or apprentice, Thomas Bartlet, who took over the Whitechapel foundry on Carter’s death in 1619. Bartlet’s descendants ran the foundry until the end of the 17th Century.
Condition report
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