AN AMERICAN SILVER COFFEEPOT

Thomas Fletcher, Philadelphia ca.1838

The ovoid form body chased and applied with scroll, leafage and blossoms around two vacant reserves and below a slightly ribbed neck with an alternating band of leaves and anthemions, the spout and handle opposite chased with scrolling leafage, on a shaped circular spreading foot similarly decorated. Marked under base [T]FLETCHER/ PHILAD. in a filled oval punch. Initials removed from reserves.H: 11 in.; wt.: 54 oz.NOTE This coffee pot is virtually identical to a design from the Fletcher & Gardiner workshops for a set of silver given to Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844) in 1838 by the directors of the United States Bank in Philadelphia, as thanks for his services. The drawings from the Fletcher & Gardiner workshops, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, are illustrated in Fletcher & Gardiner: Silversmiths of the American Empire, by Katharine Morrison McClinton (Connoisseur Magazine, March 1970), no. 12. It is probably that this pot was made for another patron who admired the original; Biddle's set was apparently melted down when the Bank failed.