This tankard attests to the level of sophistication that Rhode Island silversmiths achieved by the early eighteenth century.  Isaac Anthony apprenticed and began his career in Boston, and the Bayou Bend tankard evinces a design influence from that town. It also contrasts markedly with the earlier examples, notably in its domed lid and flame finial, a stylistic incongruity explained simply as a replacement. The tankard’s popularity declined by the century’s end as wine and spirits replaced beer, cider, and ale as the beverages of choice.

Technical notes: A disk is intended to strengthen the body at its juncture with the lower handle. The scrolled thumbpiece is embellished on the back with an acanthus leaf. The domed lid and soldered finial are later additions, as corroborated by the presence of two rather than one set of thumbpiece impressions on the handle. The results of a nondestructive energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis (on file at Bayou Bend) confirm this alteration and suggest it was done at an early date.

Related examples: Gourley 1965, no. 221; Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, sale 4113, April 25–26, 1978, lot 641. The Bayou Bend tankard's engraving relates to that on the latter as well as to that on a tankard and a can by Samuel Vernon (Buhler and Hood 1970, vol. 1, pp. 273–75, no. 459; Gourley 1965, no. 307). Another engraved tankard, marked by John Coney and made for the Cranston family of Rhode Island, may have inspired the engraving on the Anthony and Vernon silver (Fairbanks et al. 1981, p. 627).

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.