This silver tankard, created around 1755 by noted Boston silversmith, Samuel Minott, was donated to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by Fairhaven resident Thomas E. Linzee, Jr. Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Press Release
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is pleased to announce the donation of an important 18th-century silver tankard, the gift of Fairhaven, Mass. resident Thomas E. Linzee, Jr. The tankard descended in Mr. Linzee’s family over the last 260+ years.
Made in the 1750s by noted Boston silversmith Samuel Minott (1732-1803), the form conforms to the standard size and shape in fashion at the time: straight, canted sides with a base molding, an applied mid-band, and a stepped, domed lid capped with a flame finial. A tall thumbpiece with scrolled top sits above a hollow s-curved handle decorated with applied cutwork and terminating in a plain circular, domed disk. Yet, this tankard has a highly unusual characteristic: it is engraved with not one, but two family coats of arms.
A coat of arms is a visual design that represents an individual or a family, and is usually composed of a group of symbols and shapes on a shield. The custom originated among European nobility in the Middle Ages when a king or queen bestowed the “right to bear arms” to an individual or a family. In the British North American colonies, far from the central powers in London, numerous wealthy families used coats of arms to signify their status — some legitimately, and others not. Both coats of arms on the silver tankard appear to be legitimately passed down in their respective families.
The first coat of arms on the tankard, belonging to the Cary family of Boston, features three roses with a swan crest and appears on the body of the piece opposite the handle above the mid-band. The second coat of arms represents the Soley family of Charlestown and includes three expertly engraved fish, with a fourth fish above a helmet for the crest. It is engraved directly beneath the Cary arms, below the mid-band.
Why would someone engrave two coats of arms on a tankard? After examination under high magnification, both are believed to have been applied in the 18th century, and each appears to be the work of at least two different hands. It is possible that the Soley crest was added to the tankard when John Soley (1722-1801) married Hannah Cary (ca. 1729-1798) in 1759, but we may never know for sure.
Mr. Linzee would like to thank his great grandmother, Katherine Codman Soley Spooner for gifting him the tankard.
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