AFA Summer 2018

Summer 112 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Muhlenberg, including a large urn-shape sugar bowl with pierced rim, helmet-form silver creamer, and slop bowl; the five cups remain in the family but no trace of the sugar bowl or its companion pieces was found among living descendants. Then along came the Roy and Ruth Nutt sale at Sotheby’s in 2015. Tucked away in this vast collection of American silver was the Muhlenberg sugar bowl, which by then had lost its family history (Fig. 3). 4 The sugar bowl was acquired on behalf of The Speaker’s House organization, and is now home again in Trappe. Stamped on the foot rim is the mark of Christian Wiltberger (1766–1851), a leading Philadelphia silversmith in the late 1700s. Given their shared German heritage, it is likely no coincidence that the Muhlenbergs hired Wiltberger. Sugar was particularly meaningful to Frederick and Catharine Muhlenberg. Her father, David Schaeffer Sr., was a sugar refiner or “baker” in Philadelphia. After his death in 1787, Catharine and her siblings became part owners of the refinery. Frederick Muhlenberg soon bought out his in-laws and went into partnership with Jacob Lawerswyler. Plagued by a string of bad luck including the loss of a ship to pirates—who also kidnapped and ransomed his son-in-law, John M. Irwin, who was on board—Frederick ’s sugar venture ultimately failed. Nonetheless, sugar was a valuable commodity mentioned frequently in Muhlenberg family papers and sold in Frederick’s general store, adjacent to his house in Trappe. Another long-lost object illustrated in the 1910 Muhlenberg Album that has recently come to light is an inlaid card table owned by Maria Salome (Sally) Muhlenberg (1766–1827) and her husband Matthias Richards Jr. (Figs. 4, 4a). After the card table surfaced at auction in 2012, careful study of its distinctive bellf lower inlay enabled a firm attribution to the Reading, Pennsylvania, cabinetmaker Daniel Rhein, based on a signed clock case with identical inlay. The youngest daughter of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg and his wife Anna Maria Weiser, Sally married Matthias Richards Jr. in 1782. They lived in New Fig. 4: Card table, attributed to Daniel Rhein (1778–1868), Reading, Berks County, Pa., ca. 1810. Mahogany, satinwood, and mixed- wood inlay with tulip poplar and white pine. H. 30, W. 36 ½ , D. 17¾ inches. Private col- lection. Photo by Gavin Ashworth.