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Lot Essay
David Barquist, in his recent book, Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York, has established that silversmith Parisien was closely associated with Myer Myers from the mid-1750s to the mid-1760s, and that silver objects bearing his mark were actually likely made by Myers. Dr. Barquist believes that Parisien worked primarily as a "specialty outworker" (i.e. chaser) or jeweler, and that the large objects in silver marked and sold by Parisien were in fact made and supplied by Myers.
Indeed, the present candlesticks appear to be cast from the same mold as the set of four marked by Myers made for Catharine Livingston (two are at Yale University Art Gallery, two are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). The fact the mark on the present candlesticks is struck in the same place (on the sockets) as the Myers marks on the Livingston candlesticks suggests that Parisien acquired them from Myers and overstruck the visible marks, leaving the inconspicuous marks on the nozzles untouched.
Other castings on Parisien-marked silver betray origin in Myers's shop. Barquist notes that the castings on a Parisien-marked coffeepot appear on several coffeepots by Myers and that a handle of a porringer marked by Parisien is from the same mold as those on porringers marked by Myers and the Halsted & Myers partnership. This relationship between the castings of Parisien and Myers had also been observed by Louise Avery, who discovered the same shell-form handle casting on a Parisien mug in the Clearwater Collection and on a Myers mug in the R. T. H. Halsey Collection. In the case of candlesticks, Myers used an English model to make his mold, and the evidence of covered-up hallmarks under the base of his Livingston examples is the same as on the present Parisien-marked pair. (See David L. Barquist, Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York, 2001, esp. pp. 58, 119-122, 132, 210, and Louise Avery, American Silver of the XVII & XVIII Centuries, 1920, p. 142, no. 289.)