British Silver: the Wealth of A Nation September 3, 2012

The production of silver in Britain was understood to be the embodiment of the country's prosperity--an outward expression of political stability, taste, and industriousness. This exhibition explores some of the ingredients that made the English silver trade such a vigorous success in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawn largely from the Museum's collections, it also includes extraordinary loans from private collectors, including Paul de Lamerie's great rococo coffeepot of 1738 and the famous Maynard Dish belonging to the Cahn Family Foundation.