Description:
Silver teaspoon with a stylized shell with outlined rays on the back of the oval bowl and with a gadrooned-like edge around the down-turned, rounded-end handle, which is marked "I* P" in a rectangle on the back near the bowl attributed to Isaac Parker (1749-1805), and engraved with the initials "A / G.S" on the front of the handle. Isaac Parker was the son of John Parker (1725-1765), a potter of Charlestown, Massachusetts, and Abigail Goodwin Center (1725-1789), and nephew of Boston goldsmith Daniel Parker (1726-1785). Isaac Parker probably apprenticed with his uncle by marriage, Boston jeweller John Welsh (1730-1812), from 1763-1770. In 1776, he married Deborah Williams (1753-1838), the daughter of Samuel Williams (1711-1786), a yeoman and Abigail May (c.1721-1793) of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and served twice during the Revolutionary War, once under Colonel Williams and once under Col. Elisha Porter. According to George Sheldon, Isaac first came to Deerfield in 1774, but this has not yet been confirmed; however, Isaac and his family were in Deerfield by 1778 when his eldest son Isaac was born. Records of his work appear in the account books of his Deerfield neighbor, the hatter Justin Htichcock (1752-1822); between 1778-1785, the two sold each other a number of goods ranging from silver and silver repaits to Parker's sale to Hitchcock of West Indies rum. Between 1783-1789, Parker conducted seven land transactions in Deerfield, and in all but one, Parker was listed as a jeweler. By 1789, Parker and his family returned to Boston where a deed of that year identified him as a Boston trader; he was listed in the Boston directories from 1798-1805 as a merchant. His probate record of 1805 listed no silversmithing or jewlery tools from his earlier carrer. Little evidence of Parker's silversmithing survive. Yale University Art Gallery has a silver teaspoon with a touchmark with his first initial and surname, "I*PARKER" in a rectangle; PVMA has a spoon with a second touchmark with the initials, "I*P" in a rectangle, which came from the Caitlin family of Deerfield and Shelburne, Massachusetts and which Kane tentatively attributes to Parker. However, this spoon was said by the descendent who donated it to have belonged to Sarah Caitlin (b.1738) who married Moses Smith in 1761 and moved to Shelburne, Massachusetts, which would predate Isaac's arrival in Deerfield. However, Kane notes that the shell on the PVMA spoon bears a striking resemblance in its width and the technique of outlining the rays on the shell on the spoon with Parker's initials and surname at Yale University Art Gallery (Buhler/Hood, #287), and that the similarity leaves open the possiblility that the PVMA spoon may have been made by Parker. HD's spoon has similar decoration and mark as the PVMA spoon.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+83.153 |
