John Coney is arguably the greatest of all colonial American silversmiths. His shop is recognized as the first in this country to have produced several forms, including the inkstand, fork, sugar box, chafing dish, monteith, and chocolate pot, and the earliest New England teapot. Coney was equally adept as an engraver, executing the plates for some early paper currency for Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The Bayou Bend tankard is a consummate American expression of Early Baroque silver. It is outstanding for its unusual tiered and reeded lid. It is endowed with a sense of dynamic movement to which only one other piece of American silver from this period corresponds; Coney’s great two-handled covered cup that Massachusetts Lieutenant-Governor William Stoughton presented to Harvard College in 1701. The tankard was made for John Foster, a prosperous Boston merchant and prominent official. Foster was clearly a man with sophisticated taste and lofty aspirations. In 1692 he erected in Boston an extraordinary house that is credited with introducing New Englanders to the Italian Renaissance style.  Foster’s tankard, like his mansion, is one of the most eloquent statements of style in early New England.

Technical notes: Below the handle's juncture with the lip is a boldly executed body drop, and at the base is a graceful cut card. The bezel has been removed. 

Related examples: The Bayou Bend tankard is most like Buhler 1979, pp. 12–13, no. 3. Four similarly lidded Coney tankards belong to the First Parish, Cambridge (Jones 1913, pp. 107–8, pl. XLII).

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.