Jerningham wine cooler
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The Jerningham wine cooler is a large wine cooler made out of silver in the 18th century.
History
The original was commissioned 1734–5 in London by Henry Jernegan (Jerningham) of Russell Strret, a London goldsmith-banker, who wanted to create the largest ever wine cooler celebrating the pleasures of wine. He employed the sculptor John Michael Rysbrack to model the Bacchanalian scenes on the bowl, the crouching panthers beneath and the satyr handles. It took the German silversmith Charles Frederick Kandler four years to make and weighed 8,000 ozs.
In 1737, Jernegan offered the cooler as a lottery prize to raise funds for a new bridge over the Thames at Westminster. Silver medals were sold as lottery tickets about five or six shillings each. The winner, Major William Battine of East Marden, Sussex, appears to have sold the cooler to the regent Grand Duchess Anna Leopoldovna of Russia in 1738. Since 1743 the cooler has been in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
An electrotype (silver on copper core) copy was made during the Victorian Age in 1884 in Birmingham by Elkington & Co. in celebration of the original. This copy (see photo) is now located in the Victoria and Albert Museum. There is another electrotype copy in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and also in the Queen's Regimental Silver in England. Estate Silver Co.Ltd, in New York currently has, for sale, a sterling silver copy of the original cooler. This is the only known sterling silver copy known to have been made