Beaker (one of a pair)

This pair of silver-gilt beakers may have been components of a dressing table set but equally could have been part of a set of cutlery and other dining implements to be used when the owner was traveling or hunting.



The beakers are unmarked but are of the type which was a speciality of Strasbourg goldsmiths, the form having been developed there under German influence in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The city was particularly renowned for its unparalleled gilding as evident here.



Although it remains difficult to establish exactly what beverages would be taken in silver beakers of this period, they may have held water, spirits, beer or even hot spiced wine.



This pair of beakers was part of the collection of silver bequeathed to the museum in 1948 by Catherine D. Wentworth (1865-1948). Mrs. Wentworth was the daughter of one of the founders of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. She was an art student who lived in France for thirty years and one of the most important American collectors of eighteenth-century French silver. Part of her significant holdings, which included snuffboxes, French furniture and textiles as well, were left to the Metropolitan Museum. The collection is particularly strong in domestic silver, much of it provincial, and includes a number of rare early pieces.