Skip to Content

Tankard

Showing 1 of 1


  FILTER RESULTS

Tankard

circa 1729
silver
8 3/8 in. x 7 in. x 4 7/8 in. (21.27 cm x 17.78 cm x 12.38 cm)
Currier Funds, 1943.20

Andrew Tyler
American
1692–1741

The tankard, a staple in the colonial American silversmithing trade, was already an archaic form in England, where it had originated, by the time Boston silversmith Andrew Tyler produced this example in 1729. The story of the tankard in colonial Boston is a story of compromise, adaptation, and innovation. A declining local economy beginning in the 1720s meant that by 1729 very few people could afford to buy silver; it also meant that few immigrant craftsmen saw Boston as a place of opportunity. Until this time, the influx of foreign craftsmen and a growing economy had ensured a brisk business for anyone able to reproduce the latest English styles for fashionable Boston patrons. Those who could afford plate preferred to acquire traditional forms, such as tankards, canns, and porringers-objects that had conveyed status in previous generations, would not seem ostentatious, and would hold their value. Thus the tankard received more attention than it would have had the prosperity of the early eighteenth century continued.

Boston tankards underwent two significant stylistic renovations after the form became obsolete in England. The first was the substitution of a domed lid for a flat, brimmed cover. The second, subsequent, change was the tapering of the tankard body, the use of a double-domed lid and finial, and the addition of a molded midband on the tankard body. Within the constraints of the tankard form, silversmiths in Boston found ways to make it seem new. The changes happened gradually, and this tankard contains elements of both stylistic developments, offering a good example of a form in transition. The high domed lid with its cast urn and flame finial and the tapered body are characteristic of the final stage of tankard development; while the absence of a molded midband is more characteristic of the second, earlier phase of development, and the heartshaped terminal is associated with the first generation of tankards. In 1729, this tankard would have been viewed as moderately fashionable, incorporating some of the latest details, yet retaining tried and true elements. The unadorned, smooth surface of the tankard body, framed by the restrained curves of the contoured lid and the Gothic S-shaped handle, epitomizes the late baroque style, which sought to streamline the elaborate kind of decoration that had been fashionable a generation earlier (see cat. no. 51) in favor of a more austere aesthetic.

Andrew Tyler was an accomplished and established silversmith in 1729, approximately when this tankard was made for an unknown patron. His early training is not verifiable, but he may have been an apprentice of John Coney's (q.v.). Tyler was involved in the settlement of Coney's estate, which suggests close ties between the two men. Tyler's reputation and clientele extended beyond Boston, as evidenced by the 1726 inventory of Portsmouth resident Samuel Winckley, which lists silver made by prominent Boston silversmiths, including two canns made by Tyler. Tyler's marriage in 1714 to Miriam Pepperell of Kittery, near Portsmouth, linked him to one of the most powerful and prominent families in New England and was no doubt good for business. When Tyler died in 1741 he was a wealthy man, leaving the sizable sum of thirty pounds to the Boston poorhouse.


WNH and KB


REFERENCES

Martha Gandy Fales. Early American Silver. New York: E.P. Dutton and
Company, 1973. Pp.16-22, 49-52, 260.

Barbara McLean Ward. "Boston Goldsmiths 1690-1730," in Ian M.G. Quimby, ed., The Craftsman in Early America. New York: W.W. Norton for the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1984. Pp. 126-57.

Barbara McLean Ward. "The Edwards Family and the Silversmithing Trade in Boston, 1692-1762," in Francis J. Puig and Michael Conforti, eds., American Art and the European Tradition, 1620-1820. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989. Pp. 66-91.

Brock Jobe. Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks From the New Hampshire Seacoast. Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1993. Pp. 156-58.


Exhibition
1995-1997 "American Art from the Currier Gallery of Art." Organized by the Currier Gallery of Art and the American Federation of Arts. Venues: Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, Dec. 3, 1995 - Jan. 28, 1996; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL, Mar. 15 - Apr. 7, 1996; Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, VA, Aug. 10 - Oct. 13, 1996; The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN, Feb. 2 - Mar. 30, 1997; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, Apr. 25 - June 22, 1997; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, July 18 - Sept. 8, 1997, cat. no. 54.

Provenance
George C. Gebelein
Purchased by Currier Gallery of Art, 1943


Your current search criteria is: Object is "Tankard".