Beaker
INSCRIPTION: Engraved with script initials “WMB” on the side of body.
MARK: Struck on underside of base with incuse “E.C.GARNER” mark.
MAKER: Eli C. Garner was born in Virginia in late 1817 and apprenticed as a silversmith under Asa Blanchard (b.c.1770-1838) in Lexington, Kentucky from 1838 until 1842. Garner worked in Lexington from 1843 through 1862 in partnership with Daniel Frank Winchester (1817-1868). The firm Garner & Winchester was dissolved in 1862 when Winchester served in the Civil War. By 1864 Garner was listed in the Lexington city directory working alone as a jeweler and silversmith. The 1873 directory listed him as a silversmith, jeweler, and engraver. He died in January 1878.
FORM: Small drinking cups were popular throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Earlier examples usually have handles while nineteenth-century examples often did not. Like most silver hollowware created after the late eighteenth century, beakers were most often made from a rolled sheet of silver and seamed vertically up the side, in contrast to earlier examples that were raised (hammered up) from a disc.
