AN IMPORTANT SILVER TAZZA

MARKS OF JOHN EDWARDS AND JOHN ALLEN, BOSTON, CIRCA 1700

Details

AN IMPORTANT SILVER TAZZA
MARKS OF JOHN EDWARDS AND JOHN ALLEN, BOSTON, CIRCA 1700
Circular with spirally gadrooned border, the flaring cylindrical foot also with spirally gadrooned border, the field engraved with a coat-of-arms and crest within stylized fruit and foliage, the reverse engraved 1616 1882 Isabella Thomas to Mary H. Thomas; marked on field IE (Kane mark A) and IA (Kane mark B)
9 in. (22.8 cm.) diameter; 12 oz. 10 dwt. (397 gr.)

Provenance

Coffin Family of Massachusetts, by descent to

Isabella Stevenson (b. 1763), m. Joshua Thomas (b. 1751)
Mary Howland Lebarron (1796-1867), daughter-in-law, m. John Boice Thomas (1787-1852)
Joanna White Davis, granddaughter
Mrs. Richard H. Morgan (lender in 1911 and 1930)
Richard Loeb, New Jersey
With Ginsburg & Levy, sold to Walter M. Jeffords, 1948
The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter M. Jeffords, Sotheby's, New York, 29 October 2004, lot 696

Literature

American Church Silver of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries with a few pieces of Domestic Plate, Boston, 1911, p. 1, illus. pl. 27
Charles Knowles Bolton, Bolton's American Armory, 1927, p. 37
C. Louise Avery, Early American Silver, 1930, illus. pl. XLVII
Kathryn C. Buhler, Colonial Silversmiths: Masters and Apprentices, 1956, cat. no. 58, p. 58.
Patricia E. Kane, Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers, 1998, p. 144

Exhibited

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1896
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July-December 1911, no. 6
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Colonial Silversmiths: Masters and Apprentices, 1956, no. 58

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Lot Essay

The arms are those of Coffin, as recorded in Bolton's American Armory, probably for one of the sons of Tristram Coffin (d. 1681), an English émigré who settled in Massachusetts, living in Haverill, Newbury, and Salisbury before becoming one of the early proprietors of Nantucket in 1680.

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