Tea Service: Kettle-on-Stand
Jones, Ball and Poor, American, mid - 19th century
Woodward and Grosjean, American, mid - 19th century
Boston, Massachusetts
1846-1852
Silver
Overall: 7 × 10 1/2 in. (17.8 × 26.7 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Judge Bailey Aldrich in commemoration of a warm friendship with Frank L. Harrington, Class of 1924
M.975.80.1
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
19th century
Object Name
Tools and Equipment: Food Service
Research Area
Decorative Arts
Not on view
Inscriptions
Marked on bottom: JONES. BALL & POOR / PURE COIN / W & G. / BOSTON [each in rectangular punch]; engraved on bottom, in script: E.P. and B.A. / August 13, 1932
Label
The finials on the tea set portray unclothed figures, presumably Native Americans. Above the teapot, a woman with a long braid examines an oversized vegetable or blossom; the covered sugar bowl supports a figure wrapped in leafy stalks; and the milk jug features a child eating berries from a basket. Such intimate engagements with fruits or flowers echo the persistent, reductive stereotype of Native Americans being close to nature.
Daniel Webster (Class of 1801, portrayed in the above portrait) purchased this set in the late 1840s. In March 1847, he also purchased an enslaved man named Paul Jennings, granting Jennings his freedom if he worked for Webster to repay the debt. Jennings likely served tea from this set, because Webster later recommended him to another employer as a “very honest . . . and competent dining room servant.” Paul Jennings, born in Virginia and previously enslaved to President James Madison, wrote the first White House memoire in 1865.
From the 2023 exhibition Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, curated by Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art
Exhibition History
American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.
American Decorative Arts at Dartmouth, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 10-March 1, 1981.
Harrington Silver Case, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 21, 1979.
Harrington Silver Case, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 1977-January 1978.
Harrington Silver Case, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 15, 1976-January 28, 1977.
Hood Treasures, Harrington Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1985.
Silver Case, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1987.
Publication History
Margaret J. Moody, American Decorative Arts at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: The Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1981, p. 49.
Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 195, no. 165.
Provenance
In the collection of Daniel Webster; 1975 given to Dartmouth College by Judge Bailey Aldrich.
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