TEA SERVICE

MESDA’s five-piece coffee and tea service by Charles A. Burnett is in the new style of late neoclassical silver that every fashionable family had to own in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. No longer acquired a piece or two at a time, beverage services were more often sold en-suite, all pieces having similar bodies, handles, finials, and decorative bands. Neoclassical services often included both coffeepots and teapots, distinguished by size.  Coffeepots were larger. This new style gained popularity from 1800 to 1820, and is characterized by oval-bodied pots that might be plain, fluted, or lobed. The pieces in MESDA’s service are marked with the name punch “C*A*BURNETT” in rectangle with an eagle head in clipped rectangle struck once or twice (except on the waste bowl, which is unmarked). The service was owned by Nathan Loughborough (1772–1848), a native of Fairfax County, Virginia, who served in the federal government from his Georgetown home.

When the new national capital was formed in the 1790s, the small seaport towns of Alexandria and Georgetown expanded as part of the ten-mile square District of Columbia.  Burnett was one of the District of Columbia’s most prolific silversmiths.  Burnett worked in Alexandria from about 1793 to 1796.  It was there that he met John E. Rigden (w. c. 1796-1831), with whom he formed his only partnership, Burnett & Rigden (w. 1796-1806) in Georgetown.  Burnett continued the shop in Georgetown on his own until about 1840, and he died in 1849. During his fifty-two active years, Burnett provided large quantities of table silver and teawares for local Maryland and Virginia families and for the temporary residents of the new capital of Washington. Presidents, senators, and other politicians and diplomats would carry home Burnett’s beakers, racing trophies, and tea services in the latest style, dispersing Burnett-made silver throughout the nation.