Teapot

Paul Revere Jr.

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drum-shaped teapot represents a transition to the Neoclassical style. It is one of six surviving Boston examples of this type, all made in the Revere shop. The oval-shaped teapots (33.120.543) so characteristic of Revere's post-Revolutionary War production were made from rolled sheet silver seamed at the handle. The drum-shaped bodies, however, were hammered up from a single disk of silver. Neoclassical styling is evident in the straight reeded spout and handle sockets of this pot and in the cast pinecone finial. The monogram "S I B," engraved on the body in intertwined script, is that of Stephen and Isannah (Hichborn) Bruce, who were married at Kings Chapel in Boston in the autumn of 1776. Isannah was a cousin of Revere’s. The teapot descended in the family until 1969, when it was donated to the Museum.

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