About This Artwork

Jean-Simon Chaudron
American, 1758-1846, born France
Anthony Rasch
American, c.1778-1859?

Tea and Coffee Service, 1809/12

Silver and ebonized wood
Coffee pot: h. 29.2 cm (11 1/2 in.); Tea pot: h. 26.7 cm (10 1/2 in.); Cream pot: h. 18.4 cm (7 1/4 in.); Sugar basin: h. 23.5 cm (9 1/4 in.)
Each piece marked on underside of base in banners: "CHAUDRON'S & RASCH" and "STER-AMER-MAN-" [Sterling American Manufacture]
Robert Allerton Endowment, 1989.156.1-4

American Art
American Gallery 169

Born in France, Jean-Simon Chaudron emigrated to Haiti in 1780, where he lived for thirteen years, before moving with his new wife to Philadelphia. By 1799 he was established as a silversmith and formed a partnership with Anthony Rausch, a Bavarian immigrant who had trained as a silversmith in Germany, in 1809. Utilizing technical advances that developed during the first decades of the nineteenth century, Chaudron and Rausch were able to produce a number of objects using many of the same decorative motifs. Together, the artisans created some of the most ambitious neoclassical silver in America, taking many of their decorative elements from French and English silver designs from the early nineteenth century, as well as motifs from Greek mythology.