Object Details
Object Essay
Dish crosses, or table crosses, are among the rarest forms in 18th-century American silver, with fewer than a dozen examples known.11. An example of the form by Myer Myers of New York is at the Yale University Art Gallery (Buhler and Hood, 2: 103–4). At least two dish crosses by Gerardus Boyce of New York have been recorded. One of these, now at Winterthur, was formerly on loan to the Department of State (Silver Supplement, 51, and Fennimore 1985, 16–17); the other is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Checklist of American Silversmiths’ Work, n.p.). Other examples of the form include two by Standish Barry of Baltimore (Hammerslough and Feigenbaum, 4: 7; Goldsborough 1983, 79); one by David Hall of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Three Centuries, 122–23); and one by Ephraim Brasher of New York in the Art Institute of Chicago (Antiquarian Society, 159). Most English dish crosses date to the 1760s and 1770s, and though American dish crosses were made twenty or thirty years later, they duplicate their English prototypes very closely. Undoubtedly the American clients for luxury forms like these were especially eager to imitate English fashion. Although most 18th-century silver dinner-table equipment originally was made in pairs or even-numbered sets to provide visual symmetry in the table setting, dish crosses appear to have been made as individual items to occupy the table center. They were used to give importance to a dish, to protect the table top from heat and moisture, and, when a lamp was included, as in this example (which is missing its top), to keep an important dish hot.
The inverted pear-shaped lamp is a stylistic holdover from rococo examples. The stylized shell feet and dish brackets are derived from more naturalistic rococo ones, but are pierced and decorated with bright-cut engraving in the neoclassical manner. The feet and dish brackets slide along the four rods to provide a secure support for a dish of any size.
The maker of this dish cross, Joseph Richardson, Jr., is known to have imported and repaired plated silver dish crosses, giving him an intimate understanding of this unusual form.
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.