Paul Revere’s teaspoons with their dazzling fluted bowls are the most fully developed Neoclassical expressions in American flatware. Unique to his shop in the United States, they were undoubtedly patterned after contemporary English spoons, such as the set engraved for Elizabeth Derby West of Danvers, Massachusetts. Surviving examples suggest Revere produced them for only four clients, his day-books referring to them as “Scolopd Tea Spoons.” The contoured bowls were fashioned to complement a variety of teawares, with fluted sides inspired by classical columns.

Technical notes: The drop is modeled. The results of a nondestructive energy- dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis are on file at Bayou Bend. 

Related examples: Seven spoons from this set are in Houston private collections (Warren 1996, pp. 727, 731); others are engraved for Gilman and his first wife, Abigail (1768–1796, married 1785), in Antiques 72 (December 1957), p. 504; Buhler 1972, vol. 2, p. 428, no. 379. Other examples are Buhler and Hood 1970, vol. 2, p. 191, no. 248; Quimby 1995, pp. 158–59, no. 113a; and the State Department collection, Washington, D.C. (acc. no. 91.37.1–.12). On occasion Revere’s shop also produced fluted salt spoons and ladles.

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.