ON VIEW

Description

The simple drinking-cup portion of Winifred Clark Shaw’s Chalice is soldered to a group of vertical strips that surround and support the cup like a set of thin fingers. At their bottom, the strips are soldered to a round disk, or knop, at the top of the base. Both the strips and the disk provide the user with a comfortable and secure means of gripping the vessel. With the disk at its top, the trumpet-shaped base ends in a foot consisting of a pierced ring with rectangular openings that in turn is secured to a simple, thin disk. Made of heavy-gauge silver, which gives it a hefty feel, the chalice does not have a maker’s mark.


Context and Analysis

Winifred Clark Shaw, familiarly known as “Win,” was most active as a jeweler and weaver. She taught art at the University of New Hampshire for more than three decades, from 1954 until her retirement in 1987. She came to UNH directly from her training at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she majored in metalsmithing and minored in weaving and ceramics, graduating with an M.F.A. degree.

Shaw made comparatively few examples of hollow serving pieces, or hollowware. The Currier Museum collection includes other silver pieces by her: a three-piece tea set and a spoon. Like the chalice, those works are not dated, but they most likely were made between the late 1950s and the late 1970s. By the late 1970s Shaw had shifted her attention more to textiles.

Connections

As a superb example of modernist silverwork, Shaw’s Chalice holds a significant place in the Currier Museum of Art’s silver collection, which extends back to the 1700s and forward into the 2000s. It closely relates to earlier, handwrought Arts and Crafts silver by New England artists such as Arthur Stone, Karl F. Leinonen, and George Christian Gebelein, and to a later teapot by Maureen and Michael Banner (Currier, 2010.14). More broadly, Shaw’s work testifies to the importance of New Hampshire’s ongoing studio craft movement, which finds expression in many media. Fittingly, it was acquired with funds from the Ed and Mary Scheier Acquisition Fund, named for the famous American potters whose own work is well represented in the museum collection.

The form of the chalice, essentially a wine cup, is a modern iteration of one of the oldest forms of drinking vessel. Used internationally for domestic and religious purposes since ancient times, chalices have been fashioned in numerous materials. The New England expression of the form in silver dates to the 1600s, when John Hull and Robert Sanderson of Boston produced examples for churches and citizens of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Currier collection contains a silver standing cup with cover made about 1790 by Joseph Foster (Currier, 1981.74.6.1a,b and 1981.74.6.2a,b ) and several pewter chalices made by Roswell Gleason (Currier, 1985.57.16.1, 1985.57.16.2, 1985.57.16.3, 1985.57.16.4) and other American makers of the 1800s.

Written by Gerald W. R. Ward

Bibliography

Haskell, Sarah. Win’s Best: The Jewelry and Weaving of Winifred Clark Shaw. Durham: University Art Galleries, University of New Hampshire, 1987.

L’Ecuyer, Kelly H., at al. Jewelry by Artists: In the Studio, 1940–2000. Boston: MFA Publications, 2010.

Schon, Marbeth. Form and Function: American Modernist Jewelry, 1940–1970. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2008.