A SILVER HOT WATER KETTLE ON STAND

INTRODUCTION Jonathan L. Fairbanks, Katharine Lane Weems Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., chemical engineer, and his late wife, Mary Grace Carpenter, educator and research collaborator, are celebrated figures in the decorative arts, art, and collecting communities. Their home in Connecticut contains an important collection of contemporary paintings, oriental art and Shaker furniture. Their summer place on the Island of Nantucket has a diverse gathering of works ranging from Nantucket-made furniture to the sailors' art of scrimshaw. The breadth of the Carpenters' interests is reflected in their numerous articles in The Magazine ANTIQUES and in the publication of three books fundamental to understanding important artistic patterns or movements in the history of American design: Tiffany Silver (Dodd, Mead, New York, 1978), Gorham Silver 1831-1981, (Dodd, Mead, New York, 1982), and The Decorative Arts and Crafts of Nantucket (Dodd, Mead, New York, 1987). In the seventies it was clear that the Carpenters were breaking new ground with their research and collections. It was natural to invite them to join the Visiting Committee of the Department of American Decoratives Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In this capacity they have been active participants in dialogues, symposia, study groups, and lectures for almost twenty years. Looking back over these years it is difficult to imagine how many black holes of knowledge basic to understanding America's artistic past had not been probed. Much remains to be done. Yet, as Charles recalls, it was not until 1972 that he discovered an interest in American silver. This began with the acquisition of a Tiffany water pitcher made in 1877. The pitcher's fabrication technology was what initially captured Charles's attention. Had he turned to the conventional wisdom of the collecting world for advice, the experts probably would have advised him to search for earlier examples of silver. The majority of collectors distained Victorian design; many still do. But Charles was his own master. Guided by inquÿsitiveness and intuition (basic instincts of advanced collectors), Charles looked upon the Tiffany pitcher with an engineer's analytical eye. He was drawn to understanding the work through critical methods that were uncommon among collectors at large. He rightly concluded that popular notions were incorrect about failure of craftsmanship in Victorian America. Instead, he discovered remarkable achievements. He speculated that perhaps the Victorian era was the period of America's most outstanding and astonishing craft performances in the fabrication of silver. His collecting, research, and publications, to a large degree, have demonstrated this thesis. The two books on silver--Tiffany and Gorham--taken together, established the Carpenters as the leading authorities on the two most famous silver fabricators in Victorian America. Such large firms, of course, produced a range of wares from the most simple and commercial lines to the unique, custom show pieces made for international expositions or to grace lavish tables of the rich and famous. The authoritative writings of the Carpenters came not only from the first-hand marketplace experience of collection, but also from patient and thorough analysis of archival records of botÿ Tiffany & Co. and Gorham. Unsatisfied with mere theories, the Carpenters gathered facts from primary documents, from working drawings, and from visits to the company plants and through conversations with artisans, designers, and managers. Their books fairly sparkle with data, insights, and diversity of interests. Look, for example, at the contents of the Tiffany book. It makes very clear the fact that Louis Comfort Tiffany produced few examples of silver and that these pieces were richly wrought with few areas of plain metal left for polishing. An outstanding tea and coffee service by Louis Comfort Tiffany, which is illustrated in the book, was ordered by Harry Payne Whitney and his wife, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art of New York), as a gift for a niece, Emily Francis Whitney, who married Allan Lindsay Briggs in Boston in 1910. The set is offered for sale in this auction. The Tiffany book moves on to yield insights into the work of Tiffany & Co., dealing with issues of fabrication, craftsmanship, style analysis, uses of silver at the table, presentation silver, trophies, electroplating, marks, Japanese and exotic influences, and the era of art deco. The broad sweep of the authors' interests is demonstrated with lucid text and many superb illustrations. Iÿn 1982, when the Gorham book came out, it generated an exhibition in Providence at the Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design. Collectors and curators still talk about that display. Unlike most museum displays which are sedately arranged with objects widely spaced apart, this exhibition was densely packed with a large number of objects. The exhibition obliged the visitor to encounter Victorian silver on its own terms--not according to a thinned down broth governed by late twentieth-century aesthetics. The results were electrifying. Victorian art depends upon robustness and abundance of visual experience. Enthusiasm for rich patterning, boldness of contrasts in textures and colors, plus an eclectic borrowing from historic styles from around the world characterized Victorian art. Without quesiton, the Martele silver richly repousse by Gorham placed American silver before the world as an original contribution to the history of design. The Martele tankard in this sale was made by Gorham for the Paris Exposition of 1900. With not too much persuasion from me, six years ago Charles agreed to write a catalogue for a small but exquisite exhibition of historic silver made by Tiffany & Co. to celebrate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Company. That exhibition was displayed in the most public space of the Museum of Fine Arts, in the Carter Brown Galleries opposite the Members' Room. Charles wisely stipulated that he would consult in this task and write for the catalogue only if assured that it would be published. That stipulation was invaluable when the inevitable budget crunch came shortly before installation. The catalogue made it through the process. It is entitled The Silver of Tiffany & Company, 1850-1987, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, September 9 --November 8, 1987. Not content with having produced the two landmark studies on the major silver companies of Victorian America, the Carpenters persevered with further research on their Island of Nantucket where they faithfully attended Quaker meetings in the ancient meetinghouse. Their outstanding books about the arts and crafts of Nantucket came out in 1987 in company with a conference of scholarly papers delivered on Nantucket. Thoroughly researched, their book is intimate in detail and broad in scope. It captures the spirit of unselfconscious arts made on and brought to Nantucket, a conservative place described by John James Audubon as "that truly curious Island." If ever there were a pair of dedicated collectors who desired to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth concerning the works of art that they have collected, the Carpenters are prime candidates. Their collecting, research, and publications have been a labor of love, fÿeely shared with enthusiasm and profound genuine friendship. THE SILVER BOOKS By Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., from Memoirs of an Art Collector, forthcoming Our two books on American silver, Tiffany Silver, published in 1978, and Gorham Silver 1831-1981, published in 1982, represented an eight-year labor of love. I had no interest in silver until about 1972, even though my wife Mary Grace had for years been collecting coin-silver spoons. When we would visit a museum together she would head for the silver exhibit, while I went elsewhere. More than once I told her I did not know how to look at silver. I knew nothing about the objects, nothing about styles, nothing about silversmithing. My interest in silver started with one object, a Tiffany water pitcher with applied die-rolled borders, designed and made in 1877. It was illustrated in the Tiffany book on page 235 along with an "exploded" drawing showing how it was fabricated. In 1972 Mary Grace had traded an English creampot for the pitcher in Hilbert's antique shop. I became fascinated with the pitcher and how it was made. I started a crash course on the study of silver. I bought books, visited museums, and talked to everyone I could find who knew about silver. I found that there was a considerable body of literature on English silver of all periods, and American silver before 1815, but little had been written on the silver of Victorian America or the silver of the twentieth century. In fact, the almost universal view of writers, collectors, curators and dealers was that this "late" silver was mass-produced junk, beneath the notice of serious antiquarians. What an opportunity. The field was wide open for serious scholarship. Museum curators were not buying such silver, and what they had was hidden away in storage. Scholarly interest was at rock bottom. Silver made after 1850 was a drug on the market, selling at near scrap value, both in shops and at auction. "Good" antique dealers would not touch the stuff. In 1975 we wrote Walter Hoving, Chairman of Tiffany & Co., and, after meeting with him, obtained access to their vast files which went back to 1837, the date of their founding. For two years we mined the Tiffany holding. In New York were over sixty scrapbooks, and dozens of old Tiffany catalogs and other printed matter. At the Tiffany plant, in Newark, New Jersey, were the plant records and drawings, and thousands of dies and casting patterns. It was a formidable task to wade through all this material and ferret out the significant and interesting items that could be used in the book. I spent some time with the plant workmen and even did some silversmithing on a very elementary level. I did much reading on the social history of the time, particularly on such matters as manners and the Victorian dinner party. Our object was to do much more than just narrate the history of Tiffany's silver. We wanted to recount how it was made, to study the styles and stylistic currents of the time, and to focus on the social forces that led to the making and use of many kinds of silverware. We noted marketing techniques and, as an aid for identification, we included photographs of the principal marks Tiffany used on their silver. The Gorham book involved the same pattern. I spent several days a month for two and a half years in the Gorham plant at Providence, Rhode Island. Like Tiffany, Gorham had extensive files, plant records and drawings, including over a half million photographs. The silver books generated three museum exhibitions, for which I was guest curator: Tiffany silver at the New-York Historical Society in 1979, Gorham silver at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design in 1983, and Tiffany silver at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987. I wrote the catalogue for the last exhibition, in collaboration with Janet Zapata, Tiffany's archivist. The MFA exhibition marked the end of my silver period. I have no plans to write any more books on silver, even though I have been encouraged to do so. It was great fun, it was rewarding, but there is a time to go on to other things. Although the Tiffany and Gorham books focused wide attention on "late" American silver, it was Sam Wagstaff, the well-known collector, who made it famous. I first met Wagstaff in 1962, when he was curator of contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. He organized an exhibition of 20th-century art from Connecticut collections and borrowed several paintings from us. After leaving the Wadsworth, Wagstaff spent time at the Detroit Institute of Art, and then moved to New York, where he began to collect photographs. In a decade he had accumulated a large and important photographic collection, which he eÿventually sold to the Getty Museum. In the early 1980s, after he sold his photographic collection, Wagstaff began collecting American silver of the 1850-1910 period, the era covered by our Tiffany and Gorham books. He attended a lecture I gave at a symposium, Design 1900, at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York in 1981. After the lecture Wagstaff came up and said hello. We talked for some time, remembering the Wadsworth days and sharing enthusiasms about silver. He seemed very excited about the Gorham Martele pieces I had illustrated during my lecture. In a relatively short time Wagstaff accumulated a considerable quantity of silver, particularly serving pieces. Then, in 1986, to the tune of wide publicity, his silver collection was shown at the New-York Historical Society as a promised gift. It was an uneven group of objects, but it no doubt reflected the best of what was available over a too-short time period. Sam Wagstaff died in 1987, leaving the silver to Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer, who sold the collection at auction in 1988. My involvement in the Wagstaff sale was, of course, peripheral. However, when I walked out of the Christie's salesroom after the auction, I was aware how much I was wrapped up, emotionally and intellectually, with the whole affair. The surroundings at Christie's that day made me conscious how involved I had become in everything to do with American silver of the Victorian era. I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter, and greeted by dealers, collectors, writers and curators. Among the latter was a former curator who greeted me with: "Charles! See what you started!"

Details

A SILVER HOT WATER KETTLE ON STAND
MAKER'S MARK OF TIFFANY, YOUNG & ELLIS, NEW YORK, CIRCA 1850

Of baluster form, with circular base on four scroll supports, the body repousse and chased with Chinese figures in garden landscapes upon a matted ground, with a band of draping leaves, with branch form handle with ivory insulators, the spout applied with foliage, the hinged cover with radiating palm fronds and figural finial, the side engraved with a monogram and the date "Jan. 24", marked--12 3/8in. high
(51oz.) (3)

Literature

Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., Tiffany Silver, 1978, fig. 4, p. 10