Description:
Silver cann with a swelled body with flared, moulded lip, wide, spreading footmark, and cast scroll handle, which is marked "BENJAMIN / BURT" in slanted roman letters in a shaped cartouche for Benjamin Burt (1729-1805), and engraved with the Leonard family arms (on a fess gules, 3 fleur-de-lis, and a crest, a tiger's head emerging from a ducal crown) supported by a wolf gorged with a piked collar with a chain reflexed over the back on the right, and a bull (gules) armed, ducally gorged and a chain reflexed over the back on the left on the front side (probably done later), and the initials "G L E/ 1779" on the base. The cann marks the 20th year wedding anniversary of George Leonard (1729-1819) and Experience White Leonard (1738-1827) of Norton, Massachusetts, who were married in 1759. George Leonard graduated from Harvard in 1748, became a lawyer, a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and a representative in the first Congress of the United States under the Constitution. His property near Taunton, Massachusetts, was one of the largest landed estates in New England. Experience Leonard was the daughter of the Hon. Samuel White of Taunton, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. The Leonards were also intermarried with the Clapps and Williams of Deerfield. In 1993, Sotheby's sold a silver tankard also made by Benjamin Burt and dated 1761, which is also engraved with the Leonard arms and the initials "L / G E" for George and Experience Leonard. Bolton lists these arms for three families: a framed water color from Delano estate, New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was sold at Libbie's, Feb. 29, 1916; on a bookplate of Helen Verera Drake, engraved by Spenceley, with the motto, "Memor et fidelis; " and the "seal of W.A. Leonard, Bishop of Ohio, impales the above arms, the crest appearing as a charge on the shield, Zieber's Heral., p. 202." Fairbairn's lists the same crest for two Leonards, one being Thomas Leonard (or Lennard), fifteenth Baron Dacre, who was made Earl of Sussex in 1674 and died in 1715 without male heirs; the earldom became extinct and his daughter Lady Anne Lennard became the sole heiress and Baroness Dacre. The American Leonard family clained descent from Lennard (or Leonard), Lord Dacre who was descended from Edward III. Drinking vessels with a bulbous shape and without lids were popular in the colonies from the 1720s to around 1800; canns varied little in shape other than in their handles, which tended to be double-scrolled starting in the mid 1700s.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2180 |
