Gaming Counter with the arms of Gough impaling Hynde

This counter comes from a set made for Harry Gough (1681-1751) and his wife Elizabeth Hynde (?-1774).  

Gough made his fortune in the China Trade, starting out as an assistant at the age of eleven and rising to captain by 1707.  Gough’s profits enabled him to, in the words of his son, “acquire a decent competency” which allowed him to retire and establish himself as part of the landed gentry, buying an estate in Warwickshire, being elected to Parliament, and  serving as a director of the British East India Company from 1730 to 1751.[i] 

Counters were just one of a number of armorial objects Gough commissioned in China; he also ordered an ivory tea caddy (seen in the family portrait) and at least three sets of porcelain.  The arms on the counter match those on one of the services, suggesting that they were made at the same time and from the same pattern.[ii]

Footnotes:

[i]Memoirs of Richard Gough, Esq. and of His Father,” in Stebbing Shaw, The History and Antiquities of Staffordshire, 2 vols. (London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1798–1801), extract reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine (March 1809), p. 195; Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, Volume I (London: J.B. Nichols and Sons, 1860), p. 319; David Howard.  Chinese Armorial Porcelain.  London: Faber and Faber, 1974.  p. 165.