Skip to main content

Porringer

(1735–1816)
about 1760
Object PlaceIpswich, Massachusetts
Medium/TechniqueSilver
Dimensions5.5 x 21.5 cm (2 3/16 x 8 7/16 in.)
Credit LineGift of Rosamond G. Heard
Accession number1991.670
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsSilver hollowware
Collections
Description

Essex County silversmith Daniel Rogers produced a number of canns, a few creamers, and many spoons. Rogers’s specialty may have been gold beads, however, for surviving account books document his painstaking fabrication of these items for the regional silversmithing community. Among the purchasers were William Homes (1742 1825), Robert Evans (1768 1812), David Tyler (about 1760 1804), Isaac Townsend (1760 1812), Joseph Loring (1743 1815), Samuel Minott (1732 1803) of Boston, and Samuel Davis (1765 1839) of Plymouth.1 The Museum owns an engraved gold locket by Rogers, the only known marked example of his jewelry.

This keyhole-handled porringer is similar to another by Rogers in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Both share generously proportioned bowls and display an unusual lengthwise placement of the touchmark on top of the keyhole handle.

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.

InscriptionsOn porringer handle is engraved "I*H" in shaded roman letters [initials interpreted as facing bowl]
ProvenanceOriginal owner unknown; the porringer descended in the family of the donor along with a pair of three-legged salts by Benjamin Burt (1991.671-72), believed to have descended in the Warren/Sumner families of Boston, Massachusetts.