Two-handled cup 1690 - 1710

Editor: Here we have Jeremiah Dummer’s "Two-handled cup," made of silver sometime between 1690 and 1710. The shiny surface gives it a certain opulence, and I notice some faint engraving on the front. What strikes you about it? Curator: The hammering of the silver is what I notice. It is planished; clearly worked and reworked into its final form. This texture becomes central, more important almost, than the engraved coat of arms. This tells me something about the values placed on labor. Do we value the labor or the aristocratic status more in the late 17th, early 18th century? Editor: So you’re thinking about the act of making the cup itself? Instead of just who owned it. Curator: Exactly. Dummer, working as a silversmith in Boston, was creating a commodity. The baroque style was popular at the time. But, he was using his skills to create a valuable object, laboring with the raw material of the silver itself. We can then consider the mining of the material itself – its own context of difficult and dangerous labor – as a kind of pre-history of this decorative object. Editor: That's a perspective I hadn't considered before. The texture almost celebrates the physical effort. Curator: Right! This haptic quality asks the owner of the cup – or *us* – to remember the skilled work that made it possible. Even the social context becomes visible when we consider the engraver was working at a time where sumptuary laws controlled who was allowed to possess luxury items like these. Editor: So the cup then is a testament to both skill and the socio-economic dynamics of early America. Fascinating. Curator: Precisely. Thinking about its construction reveals much more than just its surface appearance. It invites consideration of craft versus status.