Ode to an English Urn

This hot-water urn, made in the classical style, was the centerpiece of Eleanor Calvert Custis’s tea table

As the American colonies moved toward independence in the 1770s, British consumers experienced a revolution of their own—one
of style. Fueled by recent archaeological discoveries in the Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, London designers adopted a more severe classical aesthetic that embraced simplicity, symmetry, and the repetition of simple design motifs while rejecting the fanciful exuberance, natural forms, and asymmetry of French rococo. When Martha Washington’s only surviving son, John “Jacky” Parke Custis, married Eleanor Calvert, the couple likely wrote to London requesting a silver service in the latest style to furnish their tea table, dining table, and sideboard. The extraordinary service they received fully embraced the new aesthetic, known today as
neoclassicism.

London silversmith John Carter supplied this “tea kitchen,” or hot water urn, which became the centerpiece of Eleanor Custis’s tea table. It’s a tourde-force of the silversmith’s art, carefully hammered and raised from small, flat ingots of silver to form the elements of the body, which were then soldered together to form the whole. The shape is that of a classical urn, which was one of the central design motifs of the neoclassical era. In keeping with the restrained style, the body is entirely symmetrical and largely devoid of decoration when compared to its predecessors. The engraved Custis coat of arms and crest serve as the main form of decoration, marking both the couple’s ownership of the piece and their aristocratic bearings.

Jacky and Eleanor Custis were early adopters of the neoclassical style in America, and their silver service is one of the largest and most important markers of this stylistic shift surviving from colonial America. After the Revolutionary War, Americans enthusiastically embraced the new style, just as they began to set up their own government. Americans combined the English style with their own symbols to form a style often known today as federal.

The tea urn and nearly 30 other pieces of the Custis wedding silver are on display in the new exhibition, Mount Vernon: The Story of an American Icon.

Discover more objects in the Mount Vernon collection at emuseum.mountvernon.org.