Description:
Silver, pear-shaped teapot with a domed cover with finial, faceted S-shaped spout, and shaped wooden handle, which is marked "IHURD" in a cartouche twice on the base for Jacob Hurd (1702/3-1758). Jacob Hurd has long been recognized as one of the leading New England silversmiths of the mid-18th century. The patriarch of a prominent Boston silversmithing family, he produced a wide range of tablewares in the Queen Anne style. During Hurd’s lifetime the taste for tea drinking became popular, and he met the demand for new silver forms with some of the earliest New England teapots known today. Teapots from the New York area were frequently fashioned with a pear- or bell-shaped body, but the patrons of New England silversmiths seemed to prefer globular apple-shaped teapots. Only two other Boston-made, pear-shaped teapots are known to survive; an example by John Coney is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and an example attributed to John Allen is owned by the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. Because it does not bear a coat of arms or initials, it is unlikely that the original owners will ever be identified.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+90.004 |
