Serving Dish

1677–78

Marked by John Sutton (active England, 1661–c. 1708)
London

This silver dish was probably commissioned in London as a corporate gift for the New Royal African Company, which had a monopoly on England’s commerce with West Africa between 1672 and 1698. The company bought and sold commodities such as ivory and gold, but its most lucrative business was trafficking enslaved Africans. Between 1672 and 1731 its officers forcibly transported almost 200,000 enslaved people to British colonies in the Americas. This dish, engraved with the company’s coat of arms, may have been presented to a dignitary, investor, or merchant as thanks for assisting in a negotiation.

Status: On View, Galleries 231-233
Department: Applied Arts of Europe

Artist: John Sutton
Title: Serving Dish
Place: London (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1677–1678
Medium: Silver
Inscriptions: Marks: Leopard's head crowned, lion pasant, variant Gothic "T" and "IS" in monogram in dotted oval
Dimensions: 13.2 × 38.6 × 29.7 cm (5 3/16 × 15 3/16 × 11 11/16 in.)
Credit Line: Richard T. Crane Jr. Memorial Fund
Reference Number: 1947.480
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/60774/manifest.json

“Three Centuries of English Silver,” Los Angeles County Museum Bulletin of the Art Division vol. 3, no. 3 (Fall 1950), pp. 3, 10, no. 31.
“The Editors’ Attic: Silver from the Morgan Collection in Chicago,” Antiques vol. LV, no. 1 (January 1949).
Meyric R. Rogers, “Early Silver from the Morgan Collection,” The Art Institute of Chicago Bulletin vol. XLIII, no. 5, (September 1948), pp. 59–64, fig. 3.
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, “Superb Old English Silver… Property of the Estate of the Late J. P. Morgan,” November 1, 1947, p. 141, no. 457 (ill.).
E. Alfred Jones, Illustrated Catalogue of the Collection of Old Plate of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. (London: 1908), pl. XXII.

Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, Exhibition of a Collection of Silversmiths’ Work of European Origin, 1901, no. 44.
Los Angeles County Museum, Three Centuries of English Silver, September 29–November 12, 1950, no. 31.

Mr. F. H. Woodroffe, England, by 1901 (Burlington Fine Arts Club 1901); J. Pierpont Morgan, New York and London, by 1908 (see Jones 1908); sold Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, November 1, 1947, lot 457; Art Institute of Chicago, 1947.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.