546 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
the use of molds tended to maintain the popularity of anachronistic 
designs long after abandonment by fashionable silversmiths.® 
Clearly, with so many precedents the American silver porringer can- 
not be claimed as an innovation of British or Dutch colonists. It 
represents, however, a selection from European models which gained, 
if numbers and care of manufacture are any clue, a new meaning and 
importance in the colonies. 
Few American silver porringers can be dated earlier than 1685. 
At least two of the most celebrated of these claimants have either the 
handle or monogram located in the fashion of posset pot or skillet 
covers designed to serve as dishes for hot sauces,’® In this they follow 
established, though not common, English practice." Close indeed to 
the later American porringers, these covers have straight sides, cres- 
cent piercings, and distinctive initials on the bottom or the side of the 
bowl. Initials placed here indicate that they are intended to be read 
when the vessel is placed upside down as a cover on a skillet or sauce 
pot. Any use as a vessel would be secondary to their function as a 
cover (pl. 2, fig. 2). 
The use of the true American porringer must remain somewhat 
problematic. Its single handle suggests the probable need of a spoon, 
and the comparatively shallow depth that the mixture was often 
alcoholic since without that precious ingredient a few ounces of gruel 
would give little strength, physical or spiritual. The absence of the 
second handle reduces the primary use of the vessel as a wine or 
cool-drink taster, and the absence of an insulating material in the 
handle the use of the porringer in warming or preparing mixtures 
over an open flame.!2 Moreover, the large size of the American type 
precludes its design as a bleeding bow]. What remains then is a vessel 
designed for tasty dishes of strengthening gruel with a substantial 
but not excessive alcoholic content.** 
That the rise of the American silver porringer should occur 
in the 17th century is not surprising, since in this period it found some 
®In addition to The Stuart period, pp. 82-83, a full discussion of the pewter porringer 
has appeared: Perey E. Raymond, “What is a Porringer?”’ Pewter Collectors Club of 
America, Bull. No. 8, pp. 5-7. January 1941. 
10 Mrs. Russel Hastings, Verifying a Hull and Sanderson porringer, Antiques, vol. 32, 
pp. 116-118, September 1937. Edwin J. Hipkiss, The Philip Leffingwell Spalding Col- 
lection of early American silver, pp. 13-14. Boston. 19438. 
M 
11An English posset pot with cover and handle similar to A I piece is illustrated in 
Antiques, vol. 32, p. 118, and ancther in G. Bernard Hughes, Small antique silverware, 
p. 79. London. 1957. 
12 Holding such vessels over an open flame would only be possible for a very short time, 
and a simple experiment refutes the traditional English view. J. H. Buck, Old plate, 
its makers and marks, p. 103. New York. 1903. 
13 The alternative position of describing all porringers as bleeding bowls because some 
were so used is clearly confuted in the very catalog which gave the practice its greatest 
prestige. Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue of English silversmith’s work, civil and 
domestic, No. 73. London. 1920. 
