Communion Dish

Samuel Minott

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This dish is one of six—three marked by John Coburn and three by Minott—that are thought to have been purchased with Thomas Hancock’s bequest of one hundred pounds to the Brattle Street Church in Boston. Hancock was a wealthy Boston bookseller and an uncle of John Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. The arms engraved on the rim of the dish within an exuberant, asymmetrical Rococo cartouche, are those of the Hancock family.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art