Each piece of this tea service, including the teapot seen here, was engraved with a date of 1795. The set was created for the wedding of prominent merchant Mr. J.M. Robertson of Connecticut.The combination of bulbous forms, urn-shaped finials, and foliate decorative banding suggests the prevailing taste for neoclassical design and a preference for English silver forms. In 1773 William Garret Forbes joined the Gold and Silversmiths Society in New York, led by silversmith Meyer Meyers. In 1786 he established a shop on Broadway, where he would continue to work until 1810.

Adapted from

Kevin W. Tucker, DMA Label copy, 2006.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
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