American Silver Teapot

Object Details

Object Essay

This teapot, engraved with the Bayard family arms and with a history of descent in that family, is a quintessential example of the Philadelphia rococo style in silver. The relatively low stance of the pot places it early in the popularity of the inverted-pear, or double-bellied, form. The compressed domed foot is inscribed with simple concentric lines rather than the flourish of gadrooning found a decade later on such pots, and the body springs directly from the foot without the lift of an intervening pedestal. The shallow, domed cover and flush hinge, a sign of fine craftsmanship, continue the flow of gentle curves without interruption. The finial is an early example of the bell-shaped type favored by Philadelphia silversmiths of the 1760s and 1770s. 

The banded effect at the joint between the body and spout is an echo of design details from the 1740s rather than the sign of a replaced spout or the mark of an incompetent craftsman. Such rococo niceties as the scrolled lower handle socket add lightness and movement.^{1_{Contemporary silversmiths, such as Joseph Richardson (1711–1784), to whom Syng is frequently compared, often employed a simple, tubular socket to affix the lower end of teapot handles.}} Syng is known to have employed several engravers, so the lacy embellishment of this teapot may not be by his own hand.^{2_{Buhler and Hood, 2:180.}} Syng placed his initial mark, in block capitals within a rectangular reserve, on the bottom, on each side of a scrolled leaf mark.^{3_{Joseph Richardson, Sr., used a similar scrolled leaf mark between 1750 and 1775, and Martha Gandy Fales has posited that the two silversmiths may have applied the device as an informal assay mark when the city of Philadelphia refused to grant the petition by local silversmiths to establish a city assay office; see Fales Joseph Richardson and Family, 72–73.}}

With such masterly works as this teapot to his credit, it is hardly surprising that Philip Syng, Jr., was one of colonial Philadelphia’s most successful silversmiths, producing such commissions as the silver inkstand used in signing the Declaration of Independence. 

Jennifer F. Goldsborough 

Excerpted from Jonathan L. Fairbanks. Becoming a Nation: Americana from the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State. New York: Rizzoli, 2003.