552 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
cut a star directly in the center of the porringer handle which Paine 
gave “his esteemed friend Dr. Rush.” 7 
The maker of the porringer shown in plate 8, figure 1, Rufus Greene, 
died in 1777, 85 years after the René Grignon porringer of 1692. In 
that period, a silver form, probably borrowed from the persecuted 
Calvinistic Huguenots or from neglected English practice, had been 
modified and developed by Puritan craftsmen according to Puritan 
ideology and accepted iconography. This complete, if somewhat self- 
conscious, form had in turn yielded to the sinuous enchantments of 
the Rococo, of a rediscovered nature, and the awakening of a natural- 
istic iconography, as Puritanism itself had fallen victim to the 
Enlightenment on the one hand and to the Great Awakening on the 
other. 
The handles, then, of the porringers call attention to the role of 
the Huguenot in Boston society at the turn of the 18th century. 
The acceptance of his écuelle as a suitable form for a gift measures 
his acceptance by Puritan orthodoxy, the appeal of his novel skill 
to Bostonians, and suggests the boredom of a homogeneous society 
with the Puritan temper. The initial purging of the French forms 
and their recombination into an acceptable Puritan formula indicate 
the strength of the orthodox party and the extraordinary extent of 
its influence. The rise of Rococo ornament more closely associated 
with natural forms and the corresponding decline of Puritan symbols 
parallel the increasing importance of materialism and of Royal 
government in the determination of taste and, by implication, of 
society itself. Such matters difficult to measure in the partisan writ- 
ings of the few sometimes find their best reflection in the overt sug- 
gestion of customary artifacts. 
27 Collectors notes, Antiques, vol. 75, p. 194, February 1959. This choice of handle in- 
dicates the maker’s and possibly the donor’s direct concern with the iconography of the 
voids in the porringer handle. 
