Description:
Silver pear-shaped cream pot with a scalloped rim, applied long, high pouring lip, double-scroll strap handle, and three applied cast cabriole legs with small pad junctures and trefid feet, which is marked "D.H" in a rectangle on the base for Daniel Henchman (1730-1775), and engraved with the initials "O / HM" on the base over the touchmark. The dealer suggested that these initials were possibly those of Hugh O'Bryan and Margaret Sweetzer who were married in Boston on May 2, 1751 by Rev. Samuel Mather. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Henchman apprenticed with silversmith Jacob Hurd (1702/3-1758) of Boston, married his daughter Elizabeth Hurd (b.1730) in 1753 (making him the brother-in-law of silversmiths Nathaniel and Benjamin Hurd), and worked in Boston from about 1750-1775. Henchman was an active goldsmith who served both the residents of Boston and individuals living elsewhere in New England; more than seventy pieces of his holloware and flatware are known to survive. Henchman was a good, and apparently an aggressive, craftsman. During January of 1773 he inserted an advertisement in the "Boston Evening Post" making uncomplimentary references to “those strangers among us who import and sell English plate.” He further said that he would make plate “equal in goodness and cheaper than they can import from London.” This throws an interesting light on the competition existing between English and colonial craftsmen of the day. Whether or not this was unfair is difficult to say, but there is little doubt that it put native workmen on their mettle and increased to no small degree their standards and their work. Certainly the best early American silver could compete with the fineness and quality of continental European workmanship.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+57.264 |
