Teapot 1812 - 1815

Joseph Lownes, active in Philadelphia, made this silver teapot sometime around the turn of the 19th century. The squat, neoclassical form suggests a restrained elegance, but one that also speaks to the growing wealth of merchants and landowners in the early American republic. Tea, of course, was a potent symbol in the lead-up to the American Revolution. To drink it or serve it could be interpreted as either a loyalist or a patriotic act. What then are we to make of this teapot, crafted a generation later? As a historian, I would look to probate inventories of the period. These can tell us how people arranged and understood their possessions, the social meanings of silver, and how they might have displayed this teapot. Ultimately, the meaning of art is not fixed; it evolves as social contexts shift. The historian's role is to excavate those contexts, uncovering the dialogues between objects and the societies that create and use them.