[edit]Silver ice pail from the Grand Service made by Rundell, Bridge, and Rundell for George IV. Hallmarked 1827This state portrait of Queen Victoria by George Hayter (detail) shows her wearing the new Imperial State Crown "expressly made for the solemnity of the Coronation" by Rundell, Bridge & Co., with 3,093 gems.[3]
When Edmond Walter Rundell, nephew of Philip Rundell, was admitted as a partner in 1804, the firm's name changed to Rundell, Bridge & Rundell.[4] That same year John Gawler Bridge, nephew of John Bridge also joined the firm. Following John Bridge's death in 1834 a new partnership was formed comprising John Gawler Bridge, Thomas Bigge, John Bridge's nephews and Bigge's son, and the firm changed its name to Rundell, Bridge & Co.[5]
The firm was appointed as one of the goldsmiths and jewellers to the king in 1797 and Principal Royal Goldsmiths & Jewellers in 1804, and the firm held the Royal Warrant until 1843.[6]
Amongst its employees were the well-known artists John Flaxman and Thomas Stothard, who both designed and modelled silverware. Directing their workshops from 1802 were the silversmith Benjamin Smith and the designer Digby Scott; and in 1807, Paul Storr, the most celebrated English silversmith of the period, took charge, withdrawing from the firm in 1819 to establish his own workshops.[7]
Rundell, Bridge & Rundell formed the General Mining Association (G.M.A.) in 1827 and opened a colliery in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada the same year and a second colliery in nearby Dominion (then called Lingan and subsequently Bridgeport) in 1830. The G.M.A. operated coal mines and built shipping piers and railways in Cape Breton until it sold its eastern Cape Breton County holdings to the Dominion Coal Company by 1894 and retained its Sydney Mines operations until selling to the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Corporation in 1900.[10]
Fox, George, (1843), History of Rundell, Bridge and Rundell (Manuscript of a history of the firm written by a long-time employee.) Held at the Baker Library, Harvard Business School. OCLC229894299
Lovett, Robert W. (September 1949). "Rundell, Bridge and Rundell – An Early Company History". Bulletin of the Business Historical Society. 23 (3): 152–162. doi:10.2307/3111183. JSTOR3111183.
^Hartop, Royal Goldsmiths, "Chronology", pp. 12–13.
^Hartop, Royal Goldsmiths, "Chronology", pp. 12–13.
^Marcia Pointon, "Surrounded with brilliants: Miniature portraits in eighteenth century England", The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 1, (March 2001), pp. 48–71.
^Charles William Vernon, Cape Breton, Canada, at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: A Treatise of Natural Resources and Development (Toronto and New York: Nation Publishing Company, 1903), pp. 172–8. Leonard Stephenson, Dominion, NS, 1906–1981, pp. 8–9.
