Cream pail
Properly serving tea and coffee in the 18th century required specialized equipment. At George Washington's request, New York merchant Daniel Parker ordered plated tea and coffee wares from England for him in 1783. The shipment included a tea (or hot-water) urn, matching coffeepot, two teapots, two waiters (or trays) and "2 Ea sugr & cream pails with Ladles & Glasses." The cream pail's raised urn-shaped body, chastely ornamented with cast bead borders and chased floral garland, exemplifies the Neoclassical taste fashionable at the Revolution's end. Its delicate piercing provides glimpses of the cobalt blue glass liner, which added visual interest to the Washingtons' tea table.
Pierced and engraved cream pail with swing handle on pedestal foot. Raised, circular, urn-shape body with applied, cast bead border at rim; trumpet-shape foot with plain band at top and beading on outer edge. Body features an engraved, undulating floral garland enclosed by two narrow bands of pierced leaves and rosettes; pierced reeding below. One side of body is pierced with a large rosette, the opposite engraved with George Washington's crest (a griffin rising [facing the viewer's left] from a coronet with three strawberry leaves) in a wrigglework oval. Bail handle with central rib.
B:
Cobalt blue glass liner.
Published ReferencesCarol Borchert Cadou, The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2006), 112-3, cat. 30.
Kathryn C. Buhler, Mount Vernon Silver (Mount Vernon, VA: The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, 1957), 42-5.
William Armstrong, "Some New Washington Relics. I. From the Collection of Mrs. B.W. Kennon," The Century Magazine 40/1 (May 1890): 21.