Book Description
New England, especially Boston, was a center of the silversmith’s art and craft in early America. In this volume, eleven distinguished scholars from museums and universities examine the styles, forms, and functions of silver from the time of John Hull and Robert Sanderson in the mid-seventeenth century through the career of Paul Revere in the federal period. Among the diverse topics considered are the etiquette connected with the use of silver tobacco, snuff, and patch boxes, and the social significance of Boston’s rare silver chocolate pots. An analysis of the narrative hunting scenes and other imagery on Boston rococo silver reveals much about early patterns of courtship and social interaction. A close study of John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Paul Revere and Revere’s Sons of Liberty bowl provides fresh insights into these icons of Americana, while a statistical analysis of Revere’s patrons sheds new light on the career of this famous craftsman. Two essays discuss the profound significance of silver objects within New England’s ecclesiastical history, and another documents the use of silver at Harvard College in its early days. A biography of Samuel Bartlett, a Concord silversmith, and a survey of silver on the early Maine frontier suggest the importance of regional studies, writ both small and large. These essays, based on presentations made at a conference cosponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, are published here in revised and expanded form. As a whole, they provide for an understanding of silver objects as part of New England’s material world and as reflections of the attitudes and values of their makers and users. Contributors: Richard Lyman Bushman, Columbia University Edwin A. Churchill, Maine State Museum Madeleine Siefke Estill, Ithaca, New York Jonathan L. Fairbanks, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Jeannine Falino, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Patricia E. Kane, Yale University Art Gallery Karen Parsons, Loomis Chaffee School Janine E. Skerry, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia John W. Tyler, Colonial Society of Massachusetts Barbara McLean Ward, Museum Studies Program, Tufts University Gerald W. R. Ward, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. David F. Wood, Concord Museum, Concord, Massachusetts
About the Author
Jeannine Falino is the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gerald W. R. Ward is the Katharine Lane Weems Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
New England Silver and Silversmithing, 1620-1815 FROM THE PUBLISHER
New England, especially Boston, was a center of the silversmith's art and craft in early America. In this volume, eleven distinguished scholars from museums and universities examine the styles, forms, and functions of silver from the time of John Hull and Robert Sanderson in the mid-seventeenth century through the career of Paul Revere in the federal period.
Among the diverse topics considered are the etiquette connected with the use of silver snuff, tobacco, and patch boxes, and the social significance of Boston's rare silver chocolate pots. An analysis of the narrative hunting scenes and other imagery on Boston rococo silver reveals much about early patterns of courtship and social interaction. A close study of John Singleton Copley's portrait of Paul Revere and Revere's Sons of Liberty bowl provides fresh insights into these icons of Americana, while a statistical analysis of Revere's patrons sheds new light on the career of this famous craftsman. Two essays discuss the profound significance of silver objects within New England's ecclesiastical history, and another documents the use of silver at Harvard College in its early days. A biography of Samuel Bartlett, a Concord silversmith, and a survey of silver on the early Maine frontier suggest the importance of regional studies, writ both small and large.
These essays, based on presentations made at a conference co-sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, are published here in revised and expanded form. As a whole, they provide for an understanding of silver objects as part of New England's material world and as reflections of the attitudes and values of their makers and users.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Collectors, curators and art historians will be the chief audience for this well-illustrated collection of essays on colonial American silver, its makers and use, first presented as papers at a 1996 conference held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (where both editors are curators). The essays move beyond stylistic questions to situate the works contextually, with topics that include popular songs and literature as a source of iconography, the implications of etiquette in the social uses and decoration of small hollowware, the history of chocolate and chocolate pots in colonial society, the theological circumstances behind a gift of church silver in early 19th-century Northampton, and several papers on colonial silversmiths, including Paul Revere. Distributed by the U. Press of Virginia. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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