Tankard

Thomas Hamersley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This tankard is marked by silversmith Thomas Hamersley, whose surviving work often emulates contemporary English design. The exceptionally fine engraving was probably executed by an immigrant craftsman trained abroad, as was the case with many engravers in mid-eighteenth-century New York. The present tankard belonged to New York merchant Samuel Broome (1734–1810), who married Phebe Platt (1739–1814) on June 27, 1763. Because the cover of the tankard features the couple’s intertwined initials—SPB for Samuel and Phebe Broome—the tankard could well have been commissioned to celebrate their marriage. Phebe was the sister of one of Samuel’s business partners, Jeremiah Platt, who, along with Samuel and Samuel’s younger brother John, operated a lucrative import-export business.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art