Three-piece tea service
Creampot: 20.2 x 17.7 x 11 cm (7 15/16 x 6 15/16 x 4 5/16 in.)
Covered sugar bowl: 24.5 x 23.5 x 14.5 cm (9 5/8 x 9 1/4 x 5 11/16 in.)
The refined forms and simple geometry that were characteristic of Neoclassical silver in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave way to a bolder and more robust expression in the 1820s. Hollowware dating from this period, such as these examples, consisted of thin, rolled sheet silver hammered into complex, rotund shapes that were often accentuated with pronounced lobes and usually dominated by a reliance on milled and cast decoration.
Ransom Crosby and Aaron H. Higbie were working in New York when it became America’s largest city and port. They were listed as jewelers in Longworth’s New York Directory from 1825 to 1832, after which time Higbie apparently left the partnership. The broad-hipped lobed body and the densely packed floral decoration of this tea service represent the aesthetic of the day, which combined the repoussé (made easy with sheet silver) with innovatively designed, milled bands of floral decoration.
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.
