Lot 2025

Description

Masonic Lodge, Royal Arch Companions jewel, handcrafted and engraved in gilt silver, maker's name on reverse, 'Tho Harper, Fleet Street' (this dates the manufacture of the jewel to pre 1830 - see below). Extremely fine and scarce.

Thomas Harper was born in England in 1744. He was a goldsmith, councillor, a prominent freemason and a master of The Turners Company for the years 1813 & 1829. In his early twenties he emigrated to America and is noted as being in Charleston, South Carolina in 1767. Being a staunch loyalist to the crown, he was court martialled and forced to flee America for St Eustatius on the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1778. He returned briefly a few years later when Charleston was recaptured by the British, but when it fell he returned to England and settled in London, where he established a business as a goldsmith in a Fleet Street shop. As a freemason he published an edition of the Ahiman Rezon in 1800 and two others in 1807 and 1813. At the Union of the two Grand Lodges he opened the Especial Grand Lodge as Deputy Grand Master and by unanimous accord was fraternally requested to continue in office and fulfil the duties until the appointment and installation of a Grand Master, the Duke of Kent, who subsequently appointed and installed Harper as his Deputy. After a fire destroyed his property on Fleet Street in 1829, he moved to the Featherstone Buildings in Holborn where he died on 25th April 1832 aged 88.