Philadelphia Antiques Show 2019

i Skoogfors (Fig. f), the first piece of contemporary American silver acquired by the museum in almost half a century. Acquisitions of contemporary American silver grew further with the founding in 1977 of Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show by The Women’s Committee of the Museum. In the years leading up to the Bicentennial, changes at the museum accelerated the pace of collecting American art. In 1972, Turner created a new department for American art, separating American paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from their European counterparts. Hathaway had hired Beatrice Lippincott (later Garvan) in 1966 as a curatorial assistant, and after this division she became the curator for American decorative arts. A major acquisition made in in 1966 was the richly chased coffeepot made by Philip Syng Jr. for the Loyalist James Galloway, which Galloway apparently took to Britain when he fled during the Revolutionary War. The museum purchased the coffeepot from the British antiques firm How of Edinburgh. 20 Over the next few years, Garvan was successful in encouraging Frances Richardson, a direct descendant of Joseph Richardson Sr. and Jr., to give family heirlooms as well as to endow the Richardson Fund for the purchase of American silver. Since 1974, over 150 objects have been purchased for the museum with this fund. Garvan and David Hanks were part of the team that created a new suite of galleries for the permanent collection of American art in 1976 and simultaneously curated the museum’s Bicentennial exhibition, Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art, which opened in April. The exhibition catalogue featured detailed biographies of the artists, and many of these were the first scholarly treatments of certain Philadelphia silversmiths. 21 The Humphreys hot water urn (Fig. g) that Jeffords had attempted to secure for the Museum in the 1950s again was a featured object, and after much persuasion Garvan was able to orchestrate its purchase with funds contributed by collector and museum trustee H. Richard Dietrich, Jr. The new permanent collection galleries included American art up to 1900, and thanks to Hanks many later nineteenth-century objects entered the collection, a notable example being the “Moresque” tea service by Tiffany & Co. (Fig. h), possibly the example Tiffany displayed at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1867. In the generation that followed Walter Jeffords, Richard Dietrich and Robert L. McNeil, Jr. were Philadelphia’s most important silver collectors. Dietrich and McNeil were museum trustees and friendly competitors, collecting a wide range of American art, including furniture and paintings. The silver Dietrich assembled for the Dietrich American Foundation included significant examples in the Baroque and Rococo styles made by Boston, New York, and Philadelphia silversmiths. The waiter by Joseph Richardson Sr. (Fig. i) had been in Walter Jeffords’s collection and was acquired by Dietrich in 2004 from the estate of Jeffords’s daughter-in-law. 22 McNeil also acquired many aesthetically outstanding objects (see Fig. c), but took a more focused, historical approach, concentrating on Philadelphia artisans and gathering examples by many different makers. Hollowware by some of the craftsmen represented in McNeil’s collection is extremely rare, g Richard Humphreys (1750–1832) with engraving by James Smither (1741-1797), Hot Water Urn, 1774. Silver, 21 1/2 × 10 1/2 × 8 inches (54.6 × 26.7 × 20.3 cm). Purchased with funds contrib- uted by The Dietrich American Foundation, 1977-88-1 h Designed by Edward C. Moore (1827–1891) for Tiffany & Co. (founded 1837), Tea Service, 1866- 67. Silver with gilt decoration and ivory, Teapot: 8 1/2 x 8 x 6 inches (21.6 x 20.3 x 15.2 cm), gross weight 33 oz. 1 dwt. 10 gr. Gift of the Friends of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973-94-8a—c i Joseph Richardson Sr. (1711–1784), Waiter, about 1760. Silver, diame- ter 6 5/8 inches (16.8 cm), weight 8 oz. On permanent deposit from The Dietrich American Founda- tion Collection to the Philadel- phia Museum of Art, D-2007-64 j Charles W. Westphal (c. 1776-1821), Teapot, 1800-10. Silver and wood, 11 1/4 x 17 x 4 7/8 inches (28.6 x 43.2 x 12.4 cm), gross weight 26 oz. 12 dwt. 5 gr. Gift of the McNeil Americana Collection, 2005-68-120 114 Curator’s Essay