Salver

During the 1760s and 1770s gadrooned serpentine rims replaced the scroll-and- shell borders characteristic of mid-eighteenth-century salvers (see cat. no. 39). Although unmarked, the present salver closely resembles examples made by several New York silversmiths, including Myer Myers, John Heath (1721–1806), Ephraim Brasher, and John Burt Lyng (active ca. 1761–1785). Its spirited and loosely rendered engraving particularly recalls objects marked by Myers, for instance a matching pair of salvers engraved with the Philipse family arms or a salver commissioned about 1770 by Maria Van Beverhoudt. David Barquist notes that Myers began to use this engraver around 1765 for his most important commissions and that the same craftsman appears to have engraved silver for several of Myers’s competitors. Probably an independent artist available for hire, the engraver remains unidentified.