Sauceboat

Joseph Richardson Sr.

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Introduced to America during the first half of the eighteenth century, silver sauceboats followed the design of contemporary English vessels, with scrolled handles and broad pouring lips, often supported on three cast feet. This sauceboat and its mate (24.109.26) bear the mark of Joseph Richardson Sr., one of Philadelphia’s most prominent eighteenth-century silversmiths and member of an important craft dynasty. They are engraved with the arms of Logan, set within a rococo cartouche. Although the provenance is undocumented, the armorial engraving, combined with the sequence of initials inscribed underneath, supports a descent in the Logan family of Philadelphia.

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