Samuel Kirk, the best known and most prolific of Maryland's silversmiths, was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, both his parents were descendants of English goldsmiths. He apprenticed as a silversmith in Philadelphia under James Howell before moving to Baltimore in 1815 at the age of twenty-one. He soon formed a partnership with John Smith, which lasted for approximately seven years. Dissolution of the firm was announced in May of 1821. Kirk continued in business under his own name, and his success was such that by 1828 over 90 percent of the silver submitted to the Baltimore assay office was of his manufacture. In 1846, Samuel brought a son into his business and styled its name as Samuel Kirk & Son; a second son joined in 1861, and the firm became Samuel Kirk & Sons. The brand survives today as Kirk-Stieff, though all operations in Baltimore ceased in 1999.

As the longest-lived American silver firm, Kirk’s wares span many style periods, from neoclassical to the revival styles of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The firm is best known for its mid-nineteenth-century products exuberantly decorated with scenic images or allover floral and foliate patterns. The service here, quite early in Kirk’s production as a solo silversmith, brings an expression of late neoclassicism more vibrant and energetic, one that is both characteristic of its time in its forms and decorative vocabulary and a presage of the work for which the firm became best known.