Wilfred Joseph Cripps CB FSA JP (8 June 1841 – 26 October 1903) was an English antiquarian and a writer on antique silver plate.
[1] Cripps was born in London into a wealthy family who profited from the wool trade in the Cotswolds and were prominent in Cirencester from the Elizabethan era.
In October 1880, associated with Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen, he examined by the request of the Russian government the magnificent imperial collection of plate in Russia, and in 1881 he was similarly employed in Sweden and Denmark and at Berlin.
Through his efforts valuable replicas of famous objects of artistic workmanship were obtained for the national collections at South Kensington and elsewhere.
The Countess was a daughter of Count Friedrich von Bismarck and granddaughter of Sir Henry Williams-Wynn, MP for Midhurst who served as the British Envoy to Denmark.