Cup
INSCRIPTION: Engraved with script initials “NP” on side of body, for Ninian Pinkney (1811-1877), above the arms of the Pinkney family and later engraving beneath the coat of arms that reads: “Helena L.M. Pinkney.”(b.1894).
MARK: Struck twice on bottom of base with an intaglio “JB” mark in rectangle reserve.
MAKER: A young man named John Brown was apprenticed to Baltimore, Maryland silversmith George Aiken in February 1795. This could be John Eden Brown, who was listed as a silversmith in the directories of Baltimore from 1810 until 1816. During 1810, he was located at 62 Harrison Street. Four years later he is listed on Liberty Street in “Old Town” Baltimore and in 1816 his “dwelling” is recorded as 38 Green Street. No other information about John Eden Brown is known. See Jacob Hall Pleasants and Howard Sill, “Maryland Silversmiths, 1715-1830” (Baltimore, MD: Lord Baltimore Press, 1930).
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.
