[LAFAYETTE, Gilbert du Motier, marquis de] Lettre autographe signée de Bakewell Page Bakewell Pittsburgh, 31 mai 1825 1 p. in-4
Estimation :
1000 / 1500
Adjudication :
Invendu
Description
EXEMPLAIRE DE LAFAYETTE : “YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF A SPECIMEN OF OUR MANUFACTURE" “As a small token of the deep sense we entertain, in common with our fellow Citizens, of the obligations we owe to your generous valour, to your undeviating patriotism, and to your entire devotion to the cause of Virtue and Freedom in both Hemispheres, we request your acceptance of a specimen of our Manufacture. With sentiments of the highest respect we are, Sir, most sincerely yours Bakewell Page & Bakewell" Bakewell’s, the well-known glass manufacturers, had been founded in Pittsburgh by the Englishmen Benjamin Bakewell and Benjamin Page in 1808 and specialized in producing high quality engraved glassware. They were to be joined by Joseph P. Bakewell who in 1825 took out a patent for a glass-pressing machine, which for the first time enabled mass-production and so Revolutionised the industry. Having already supplied President Madison with a service of engraved glassware, Bakewell’s were one of the comparatively few American firms to cash in on Lafayette’s visit, much of the souvenir china-ware being otherwise made in England. Lafayette’s visit to the factory in May 1825 brought them to international attention. Lafayette was presented with two cut-glass vases, one showing a view of La Grange, the other the American Eagle ; a facsimile of the thank-you letter he wrote being now in the Archives of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania (Gottschalk, Guide, p.196). One of these vases recently fetched over $250,000 at Christie’s. Three tumblers were embellished with sulphide portraits and presented to the marquis de Lafayette in 1825 by fellow Frenchman and Pittsburgh resident Felix Brunot. The engraved boughs with leaves and flowers frame Masonic symbols on one side and Lafayette’s interlaced initials on the other (cf. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number : 2001.94) “After having devoted the day on his arrival at Pittsburg to public ceremonies, the general wished to employ part of the next day in visiting some of the ingenious establishments which constitute the glory and prosperity of that manufacturing city, which, for the variety and excellence of its products, deserves to be compared to our Saint Etienne, or to Manchester in England. He was struck by the excellence and perfection of the processes employed in the various workshops which he examined ; but that which interested him above all was the manufacture of glass, some patterns of which were presented to him, that, for their clearness and transparency, might have been admired even by the side of the glass of Baccarat" (Levasseur, Lafayette in America, II, p. 183).
