Elisha Kirk is the only maker of tab handle porringers who identified his vessels with a full name mark. He apprenticed with Isaac Jackson to learn clockmaking and at that time is believed to have picked up the rudiments for casting and finishing pewter. Eventually he left Chester County, resettling in York, where he is credited with introducing the tab-handle porringer to that locale. The contour and dimensions of the Bayou Bend porringer correlate with fully stamped Kirk examples, thereby forming the basis for this attribution.

Related examples: Winchester et al. 1959, pp. 188–89, no. 4; Hood 1965, p. 53, no. 193; Montgomery 1978, pp. 197, 155–56, 252; Pewter in American Life 1984, p. 86.

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.