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…