On occasion silver was used to fashion a variety of forms intended for children, including toys, porringers, and the whistle, bells, and coral. Recorded in England by the mid-seventeenth century and in America as early as 1675, a “whissle silver chain and childe’s bell” was inventoried in the Boston estate of Captain John Freake. As the whistle and bells entertained, the coral functioned as a teether, and, at a time characterized by a high infant mortality rate, it was also believed to be an amulet to protect children from the evils of the underworld.  It was an extremely popular form, as evidenced by the Philadelphia silversmith Joseph Richardson’s letter book, which in 1759 alone recorded orders for no fewer than sixty-eight “Correll & Bells.” While the accounts confirm his shop produced the form, the scarcity of marked examples implies that it was more economical to purchase and import them from a London specialist.

The Bayou Bend whistle, bells, and coral is the only known example from Thauvet Besley’s shop. Fashioned in the Late Baroque style, it assumes a complex hexagonal shape rather than the usual octagonal one. Its masterful proportions were perhaps inspired by designs for a church pulpit from an architectural pattern book.  The mounted coral suggests a collaboration between the silversmith and jeweler; coincidentally, Besley advertised that “Peter Lorin, a Jeweller, from London who setts after the neatest & Newest Fashions, all sorts of Jewels,” could be contacted at his house.

Technical notes: One of the eight bells is lost. The results of a nondestructive energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis are on file at Bayou Bend.

Related examples: The majority of the marked American examples of the whistle, bells, and coral in silver and gold are by New York silversmiths: Daniel Christian Fueter (Buhler and Hood 1972, vol. 2, pp. 134–35, no. 716); George Ridout (Blackburn et al. 1988, pp. 194–95); Nicholas Roosevelt; and Richard Van Dyck (Libin 1985, pp. 40–41, nos. 11, 12).

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.