Standing cup

English example in Newton’s First Church that was given by Abraham White (fig. 4). It is unclear that Newell Harding & Co. manufactured silver hollowware. During the 1850s and 1860s, the firm did accept orders for presentation silver (see, for example, cat. no. 206) and retail other makers’ hollowware as well. “M & P,” whose mark is not yet identified, may have been the maker.

In addition to this wine cup, Newell Harding & Co. created at least one other facsimile of early silver. The firm’s mark appears on a silver cruet stand bearing the Faneuil family arms. It was commissioned as a copy of the English cruet stand made in 1745/46 for Benjamin Faneuil by Samuel Wood (1704 – about 1794). When the original cruet stand descended to another branch of the family, Dr. George Avery Bethune (1812 – 1886), a direct descendant of Benjamin Faneuil and thus entitled to use the Faneuil arms, commissioned Newell Harding & Co. to reproduce it. These two orders reflect the trust and confidence that local patrons placed in the Harding firm, which had been in business forty years at the time this cup was engraved.

This text has been adapted from "Silver of the Americas, 1600-2000," edited by Jeannine Falino and Gerald W.R. Ward, published in 2008 by the MFA. Complete references can be found in that publication.