An English jeweller, known for his association with royalty, and the accumulation of a large business fortune. With his partner John Bridge, he ran Rundell and Bridge, a firm with widespread interests in the jewellery and precious metal trades.
He was the son of Richard Rundell and his wife Ann Ditcher, he was born into a large family, and baptised at Norton St Philip, near Bath, Somerset. His siblings included Francis Rundell the actor-manager, a sister who married a Mr Harpur and was the mother of Elizabeth Bannister the actress, Thomas Rundell of Bath the surgeon who married Maria Ketelby the writer, and Elizabeth who married the mercer Thomas Bigge (the elder, died 1791). His great-nephew Joseph Neeld, who inherited more than half his fortune, was grandson of Susannah Rundell who married John Bond.
Rundell was apprenticed, and went into the London goldsmith's business Theed & Pickett. It became Pickett & Rundell in 1781. The firm had a major showroom at 32 Ludgate Hill, "at the sign of the Golden Salmon", in the period around 1768 to 1785. They retailed goods made by others such as John Emes. They had manufacturing subsidiaries, one run by Benjamin Smith (and for some years Digby Scott) in Greenwich, and another by Paul Storr in Dean Street.
Philip Rundell withdrew capital from the firm in 1823. He died in 1827, leaving a fortune that went off the probate scale, which stopped at £1,000,000. The residual estate, after bequests to the sum of £500,000, went to Joseph Neeld.
Money left to the Bigge family was reported to have exceeded £100,000; according to James Losh, writing in his diary after news of the death, the bequests were some compensation for having had to put up with a "tyrannical miser". The Gentleman's Magazine reported that Rundell, unmarried and without a home, liked to spend his time with his Brompton niece (i.e. Maria Bigge, who had married Thomas Bigge) or Elizabeth Bannister, another niece.
A GEORGE IV SILVER-GILT TANKARD
LONDON 1820
A GEORGE IV SILVER-GILT SHIELD OF ACHILLES
LONDON 1823
A GEORGE IV SILVER TRAY
LONDON 1821
A SET OF FOUR GEORVE IV SILVER VEGETABLE DISHES AND COVERS
LONDON 1819
A GEORGE III SILVER JUG ON STAND
LONDON 1819
A PAIR OF GEORGE III SILVER SALVERS
LONDON 1818
A PAIR OF GEORGE IV SILVER-GILT THREE LIGHT CANDELABRA
LONDON 1820
