Lot 109
  • 109

The Thomas Lake Beakers: A rare pair of American silver beakers, John Hull and Robert Sanderson, Sr., Boston, 1678-79

Estimate
300,000 - 500,000 USD
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Description

  • IH cinquefoil below in heart, RS rose above in shaped punch, on both bases near rim (Kane mark C)
  • Silver
  • height 4 3/8 in.
  • 11.1cm
tapered cylindrical with slightly flared rims, matted sides, inscribed The Gift of T/LA and added in script on opposite sides The Gift of Thomas & Alice Lake, to the Church in Dorchester, 1679

Provenance

Bequest of Thomas Lake in 1678 (delivered 1679) to
The First Parish in Dorchester, Dorchester, MA

Exhibited

Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1911. American Church Silver of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with a few pieces of Domestic Plate, nos. 582-583, p. 68, and plate 19.
Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, loan, 1938-2011

Literature

E. Alfred Jones, The Old Silver of American Churches, 1913, p. 143.
William Blake Trask, Early Matters Relating to the Town and First Church of Dorchester, Mass,1886, p. 10.
E. Alfred Jones, The Old Silver of American Churches, 1913, p. 143.
Francis Hill Bigelow, Historic Silver of the Colonies and its Makers, 1917, pps, 24, 66.
Patricia E. Kane, Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers, 1998, p. 569, 884.

Condition

one with dent to base rim, otherwise good condition, nice gauge and unusual matting
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

The initials engraved on the present lot are those of Deacon Thomas Lake and his wife Alice.  Deacon Lake was born circa 1608 in Lanchashire, England, was admitted to the First Church of Dorchester in 1640, and made a freeman on 2 June 1641.  He died on 27 October 1678 in Dorchester, his wife having preceded him in death by seven days.  As the couple died without issue, the majority of Deacon Lake's estate was left to the children of his brother Henry Lake, with the largest share going to his nephew and namesake Thomas. 

Deacon Lake's sister-in-law, Alice Ireod, was likely Dorchester's most notorious 17th century female, and Dorchester's only "witch".  Alice, who was married to Henry Lake, bore five children, one of whom died at a young age.  When the grieved mother claimed to have seen an apparition her of child she was accused of communicating with the devil who appeared to her in the form of her deceased favorite child.  She was arrested sometime in early 1648, and it is thought that Rev. Richard Mather, the pastor of the First Church of Dorchester form 1635-69, likely played a part in her trial.  She was executed sometime after 4 June 1648 – only eighteen years after the town of Dorchester was settled, and over forty years before the infamous Salem witch trials.  A book written in 1702 by John Hale entitled A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, references Alice Lake's sentence and death.  Hale notes that on the day of her execution when Alice was asked if she wanted to recant her story to possibly save her life "she utterly denied her guilt of witchcraft; yet justified God for bringing her to that punishment: for she had when a single woman played the harlot, and being with child used means to destroy the fruit of her body to conceal her sin and shame, and although she did not effect it, yet she was a murderer in the sight of God for her endeavors" (Bill Forry, "Long before Salem, Dorchester  executed its own witch", Dorchester Reporter, 29 October 2008).

In the wake of the scandal, Henry Lake fled Dorchester.  He took up residence in Portsmouth, RI, where he remained for the next two decades.  Henry left his children in the care of his brother Deacon Lake and his wife.

Deacon Lake's will dated 25 October 1678, and proven 14 December 1678, records the legacy of these beakers to the First Church of Dorchester.  The will states "direct that £5 be laid out in plate and given to the Lords Table for the use and service thereof with mind and my wifes name engraved thereon & I leave it to Mr Flint with my overseers & executors to see it done."  According to the Church's records, the present lot, described as "two silver cups or small beakers", was delivered to the Church on 6 January 1679 by Henry Leadbetter, the executor of Lake's estate (Francis Hill Bigelow, Historic Silver of the Colonies and its Makers, 1917, p. 66).

John Hull (1624-83) is the maker of the earliest surviving piece of New England silver, a beaker of circa 1650 listed in Hermann F. Clarke's 1940 monograph John Hull, a Builder of the Bay Colony, no. 1.  He was born in Market Hareborough, Leicestershire, about 18 December 1624, and came to Boston in 1635 with his father, Robert Hull, a blacksmith, and mother Elizabeth Storer.  He was trained as a goldsmith by his half-brother Richard Storer circa 1639-46, after which Storer returned to England.  In 1647 Hull married Judith Quincy, daughter of Edmund Quincy, a founder of the town of Braintree.  In 1652, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established a mint and appointed Hull to be a Mintmaster.  He immediately chose as his partner Robert Sanderson, Sr.

Robert Sanderson, Sr. (circa 1608-93) was born in England and was apprenticed in 1623 to William Rawlings, "citizen and goldsmith of London."  By 1632 he was a freeman to the Goldsmiths' Company, and for the next six years practiced his trade and trained his master's son William Rawlings, Jr.  In 1638, with his wife Lydia, he emigrated to New England and settled at Hampton, New Hampshire, where he became a freeman in 1639.  After Lydia's death in 1642, Sanderson married Mary Cross of Watertown, MA.  In 1645, he sold his land in Hampton.  He had one son John, probably from his first marriage, and from his second marriage Joseph (b. 1642), and Benjamin (b. 1649), and Robert Jr. (b. 1652).  With the establishment of the Mint in Boston in 1652, Sanderson moved to Boston, where he was admitted as an inhabitant on 30 May 1653.  Presumably, from this point until Hull's death in 1683 the two men worked together, both jointly marking the plate created.