Tankard

Elizabeth (Sheafe Gibbs) Corwin, the original owner of this magnificent tankard, was a woman of means. The eldest daughter of Jacob and Margaret (Webb) Sheafe of Cambridge, she inherited £500 from her maternal grandfather, Henry Webb (d. 1660), along with his mansion house, land at Fort Hill, and one-third of a sawmill at York, Maine. She married wealthy merchant Robert Gibbs in 1660 and, after his death, wed Judge Jonathan Curwin of Salem. Financially independent, she commissioned this fine tankard for a granddaughter.

The year in which the tankard was made is difficult to ascertain since no date accompanies the inscription to Mary Gibbs from her “honoured Grandmother Eliz : Corwin.” A conjectural date ranges from 1699, the birth date of Mary Gibbs, to 1718, the death date of its maker, Edward Webb, and of Corwin. The earlier date, if deemed acceptable, would precede Webb’s earliest documented presence in Boston in 1704, when he “served as security” for Peter Patey’s admittance as an inhabitant of the city.

Elizabeth Corwin’s personal collection of English and American silver is well documented in her will of 1717, which includes items that had been given to her by her father-in-law, Sir Henry Gibbs, a knight from Homington, county Warwick. Mary Gibbs, the recipient of this tankard, was about eighteen years old at the time the will was written. She received a silver caudle silver cup and a sucking bottle, both symbolizing the duties of motherhood and care for family members that lay in her future.

This tankard was not among the bequeathed items, and because of its small size and early style, it is possible that Corwin purchased it sometime after 1699 to celebrate her granddaughter’s birth. There is also the possibility that it was intended as a dowry gift, perhaps in anticipation of Mary Gibbs’s marriage to the Rev. John Cotton in 1719. That the tankard received no mention in Corwin’s will demonstrates how easily such gifts could be passed along the matrilineal line during the life of the donor.

During his time in Boston, Webb employed several types of cast elements and forged forms for tankards, and he was among the first to experiment with domed lids. His early flat-lidded tankards are ornamented with corkscrew, scrolled, and dolphin-and-mask thumbpieces. They all display long rattails below the hinge, a small curl on the outer edge of the handle, and a variety of termini. When Webb progressed to domed lids, he continued to decorate these new forms with the same old-fashioned casts. One example in the Museum’s collection shows an attempt to update the form with a domed lid and midband, yet the vessel still retains a long rattail beneath the handle joining and a curl on the outer edge of the handle, two elements that point to Webb’s lingering preference for a style that would soon be outmoded. This tankard, with its gadrooned lid, finely cast elements, and delicate proportions, is one of the finest examples Webb produced in Boston.

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.