- Pair of Casters
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Spices accentuated food’s flavor—or disguised it if it was spoiling—and functioned as a preservative. By the 1650s English silversmiths began to fashion containers to store and to “cast” spices. The earliest casters were cylindrical, followed by pear-shaped and polygonal examples in the eighteenth century. The Burt casters’ vase shape followed, introduced during the 1720s, and persisted until the post-revolutionary period, when a Neoclassical urn shape replaced it.
Technical notes: Both tops are pierced.
Related examples: Other recorded John Burt casters include Buhler and Hood, 1970, vol. 1, pp. 99–100, no. 113, Spokas et al. 1980, p. 90, no. 104; and one belonging to the MMA (acc. no. 24.109.30).
Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.
Provenance[Shreve, Crump & Low, Boston]; purchased by Francis P. Garvan, New York; given to Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; [James Graham & Sons, New York, c. 1940]; Edward Eastman Minor (d. 1953), Mount Carmel, Connecticut, about 1942; inherited by his daughter Margaret (Mrs. Gregory S. Prince), Chevy Chase, Maryland; purchased by Miss Hogg, 1954; given to MFAH, 1969.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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