posted 07-16-2006 03:58 PM            

In the years following WWII, the Metropolitan Museum of Art had produced by Gorham a number of reproductions of early Colonial silver items in their collections. As listed in their undated catalog, there were 11 items, seven hollowware and four spoons. Largest and most ambitious of these was John Coney's teapot, a part of the Museum's Clearwater Collection.

John Coney had become Boston's leading silversmith by shortly after 1700 and until his death in 1722 at the age of 67. He was apprenticed to Jeremiah Dummer, one of Boston's earliest silversmiths, and, according to Kane, he himself may have had at least as many as nine apprentices: Benjamin Hiller, Nathaniel Morse, Andrew Tyler, Peter Oliver, Thomas Bradford, Samuel Gray, Benjamin and Thomas Savage, and Paul Revere, Sr. He also employed a number of journeymen and is survived by more than 225 known pieces of silver of a wide variety of forms.

Of the many surviving items, there is only one teapot known. Tea was introduced into the Colonies late in the 17th Century, and Coney's teapot, dating to around 1710 - 1720, may be the earliest New England example. In style it is a plain pear-shaped pot in the Early Rococo style of English and Dutch pots of the Queen Anne period. A greater number of New York examples of this form is known, but are of a more squat nature. Coney's pot is a departure from the earlier, heavily ornamented Baroque examples of the William and Mary period with its plain globular body, s-curved "duck-neck" or "swan-neck" spout, and scrolled handle. It bears a hinged, domed lid with a knopped finial. It displays the arms of its original owner, Jean Paul Mascarene, a Huguenot emigrant to Boston.

The reproduction does not bear the arms, but was available with or without the elaborate surround that accompanied the arms on the original pot. The example illustrated here lacks that adornment. The reproduction is 5 3/4"in height, whereas the original was 5 1/8"; otherwise it appears a faithful copy, clearly marked underneath as a reproduction. Perhaps the size difference was intended to foil attempted counterfeiting of an original. Photographs have been widely published, and can be found in books such as those by Kane, Fales, and Hood (see the book thread Books: questions, mentions and reviews. for citations) but all I have seen are of the left side only. Although other views appear to be as expected, I thought it might be illustrative to show one or two of them. The original marks are given by Avery ( American Silver . . . [in the] . . .Clearwater Collection) as "(1) IC, crown above and cony [rabbit] below, in shaped shield, on lip to left of handle and on base; (2) IC in oval, on bezel." These marks are (c) and (f) in Kane (see also wev's entry forJohn Coney), and are not reproduced on the copy.

posted 07-16-2006 08:07 PM            

Can you tell if the piece was handwrought or if the body was spun? The images show signs of crude solder joints around the spout (perhaps just reflections in the photograph). Nice clean lines. Does this reproduction have a Gorham date mark?

posted 07-16-2006 11:36 PM            

quote:

---

Can you tell if the piece was handwrought or if the body was spun?

---

quote:

---

The images show signs of crude solder joints around the spout (perhaps just reflections in the photograph). Nice clean lines. Does this reproduction have a Gorham date mark?

---

quote:

---

I see no rococo characteristics about it at all.

---

quote:

---

. . . he made several masterpieces in the new style. One of the earliest of these was a teapot engraved with . . . a typical Queen Anne scroll-and-acanthus cartouche . . . Aesthetically, the emphasis lies in the inherent beauty of the material and on the sinuous Rococo "line of beauty" - the Hogarthian term for a line that curves and reverse curves in three dimensions; on this piece, it may be drawn from the lip of the body downward, going around the body as it descends. Its well-known counterpart in furniture of this period is the cabriole leg . . . .

---

posted 07-17-2006 05:27 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ahwt:
Is the Queen Anne style a subset of Rococo?

---

posted 08-03-2006 02:22 PM            

Perhaps it is better to consider the Queen Anne as being a style rather than a period. However it arose, it is entrenched in the literature and common usage. The following is from the MMA Bulletin of 1983, Colonial silver in the American Wing, below their photograph of the Coney pot, and may be elucidative for earlier commentators:

quote:

---

The influence of a newer style that was in marked contrast to the elaborateness of the Baroque began to be felt in the colonies about 1715. Now called Queen Anne after the monarch during whose reign (1702-1714) the style became popular in England, it was the dominant fashion in American silver from about 1720 to 1750. The Queen Anne emphasized form rather than decoration, allowing the inherent beauty of the metal to be revealed in harmonious lines and graceful proportions. An earlier expression of this newer taste is [this teapot] with its pear-shped outline and modicum of decoration. . . .

The basis of most Queen Anne silver shapes was the S-curve . . . which the painter Hogarth was to call "the line of beauty." Bulbous and baluster forms distinguished by flowing well-balanced lines of curves and reverse curves were hence popular. On the teapot the curves are all full and the almost globular body stands close to the ground on a very low foot. . . .

---

And apropos of the two van Dyke pots posted earlier in this thread:

quote:

---

Another aspect of the Queen Anne is seen in the "eight-square," or octagonal pieces that became popular in this period. On these, curves interplay with straight lines and the surface becomes divided into facets that exploit the reflective properties of the metal. . . . In New York during this period cut-card work was sometimes used to create effects similar to that of faceting as on the lid of [another van Dyke] teapot, where the lambequins on the cover echo the faces of [an] octagonal spout. . . .[The pot described here is like the one shown above, but has an eight-sided spout]

---