MORRISON HECKSCHER: Colonial Americans quickly adopted the taste for imported coffee, tea and chocolate. These three exotic beverages had been virtually unknown in Europe before the seventeenth century. And the fashionable utensils used in their preparation – such as this monumental hot water urn – became essential as well. Engraved in interlaced script on each side of the urn are the initials “HR.” Hannah Rowe, a wealthy Boston widow, commissioned the urn from Paul Revere. Curator Beth Wees.

BETH WEES: And this is the Paul Revere . . . whom we also know from his midnight ride. He was a wonderful silversmith in Boston, an important silversmith. . . . And the urn actually appears in Paul Revere's business ledgers on the date of April 20th, 1791.

MORRISON HECKSCHER: Shaped like an antique vessel, the work epitomizes the neoclassical style that flourished in America in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries.

BETH WEES: This wonderful, severe, elegant form, with its attenuated loop handles and the plinth and the very tall cover, reminds us that the young American republic was very much basing itself on ancient Rome. And this form allowed allusions to the glory of ancient Rome.