Object Details
Object Essay
These impressive spoons would have been a significant commission for a late 18th-century American silver firm. The fashionable custom of presenting a large variety of foods at one course (each course having twelve to twenty-four different dishes) necessitated many more table and serving spoons than are called for today. At a dinner party, this set would have made an imposing display.
The spoons are engraved with the crest of Colonel John Stevens (1749–1838) of Hoboken, New Jersey, who served in the Revolutionary War and was Treasurer and later Surveyor General of the State of New Jersey. An inventor of steam boilers and related equipment, Stevens petitioned the United States Congress for patent protection, which led to the passage of the first patent law in 1790. Between 1806 and 1808 he built the first seagoing steamboat, the Phoenix, and later operated the country’s first steam powered ferry in Philadelphia. His steam locomotive of 1825 was the first manufactured in America, and in 1830 he formed the Camden and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company.1DAB, s.v. “John Stevens.”
The 1791–1793 partnership of Van Voorhis and Schanck permits quite precise dating of these spoons and helps to establish the period of popularity for similar spoons with rather slender ovoid bowls and elongated handles edged with bright-cut engraving. Bright-cutting, in which silver is chipped or gouged away, creates a brilliant effect that plays well against the mirror-smooth surface favored for silver in the neoclassical style. On the back of each bowl is a long double, or heeled, drop and there is a central ridge at the back of the handle tip.
On May 7, 1793, Van Voorhis and Schanck advertised the dissolution of their partnership. Van Voorhis went into partnership with his son (or possibly his stepson, Thomas Richards) and advertised at several shop addresses in the 1790s. In 1803, he was appointed Weight Master for the City of New York and asked for “the custom of his mercantile friends and others disposed to befriend him in his new but necessary occupation.”2Prime 1929, 94; von Khrum, 115, 132; Carlisle, 282–83; Gottesman, 99–100. Between 1820 and 1822, he is listed as selling cast-iron ware, and in 1823 and 1824, as a goldsmith and dentist in Brooklyn. Garret Schanck advertised as a gold- and silversmith at 191 Water Street in 1793 and at 133 Water Street in 1796. Between 1796 and 1798, his brother, John A. Schanck, is listed in New York City directories as a silversmith and jeweler at the 133 Water Street address, suggesting that the brothers went into business together. They used the same surname mark.3Von Khrum, 115; Belden 1980, 375, 418–19.
Jennifer F. Goldsborough and Barbara McLean Ward
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.