By the mid-nineteenth century the Gorham Manufacturing Company had achieved a reputation for some of the finest silver then produced in America. The Bayou Bend soup tureen eloquently manifests the company’s advanced design work as well as its technical capabilities.

In 1831 Jabez Gorham (1792–1869) established the Gorham Manufacturing Company, which during the first two decades of its operation limited its output largely to flatware. As the company expanded its production lines during the 1850s, its accompanying growth is readily apparent in the Gorham records. In 1850 it employed just fourteen workers and reported annual sales at $29,000. By the end of that decade, its workforce had increased to two hundred, with sales falling just short of $400,000.

The Bayou Bend soup tureen dates from this dynamic period in the company’s early history. It is an unusually complex and rich interpretation of the form, executed in the style now known as the Rococo Revival. The lush, three-dimensional repoussée flowers and leaves are of a character and quality rarely encountered in any medium during this period. This naturalistic profusion introduced a precedent for the taste and interpretation that characterize the Aesthetic Movement a generation later.  Technical notes: The scrolled feet are cast, the foot, bowl, and lid are raised. At one end of the lid is an ogival cutout for a ladle. The gourd finial is cast in two parts. The knop is bolted to the lid and is further secured by a guidepost that slips through a hole drilled in the lid. The interior retains much of its original gilding.

Related examples: Tureens by William Gale & Son are similar in contour, in McClinton 1968, p. 54; Venable 1994, p. 59.

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.