Hot Water Urn

Used to dispense hot water when serving tea, this urn is the earliest documented object made in colonial America in the Neoclassical style. Its form, arcade and bead moldings, and stylized rosettes and laurel leaves all derive from English designs inspired by ancient Roman sources. By the mid-1780s this style, which came to be known as “Federal” after the American Revolution, had taken hold in Philadelphia. In contrast, the engraved cartouche by James Smither features the curvilinear, organic ornament of the earlier Rococo style. The First Continental Congress commissioned the urn in 1774 for presentation to its secretary, Charles Thomson, perhaps intending its classical qualities to reference the ancient Roman republic as a model for the fledgling American government.