During the Rococo period the cream pot’s contours, like those of other tea and coffee vessels, assumed an inverted pear shape. A complex, asymmetrical scrolled handle added a distinctive feature. This element appears on Gilbert’s cream pots, as well as on those by Myer Myers, Pieter de Riemer, Elias Pelletreau, Samuel Tingley, Daniel Van Voorhis, and Elias Boudinot.  The similarity suggests that the component had a common source.

Technical notes: The foot and body are raised, the handle cast. In 1990 the cream pot was analyzed using nondestructive energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence; the results are on file at Bayou Bend.

Related examples: Similar Gilbert cream pots include Antiques 75 (May 1959), p. 488; Doty 1979, p. 128, no. 102b; another, with cast cabriole legs, is in Quimby 1995, p. 241, no. 202.

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.