Sugar bowl, ca. 1785-1800

Mark:
Lown, upper- and lowercase script in a conforming punch, outside of the base; Lownes, upper- and lowercase script in a conforming punch, on the flange of the cover, both marks are worn <br/>
Engraved:
R <br/>
Dimensions:
H. 7" D. 7 1/2" 19.645 ozt. This oval sugar bowl and cover is raised on an oval pedestalled foot. Both base and cover are stepped and decorated with bright-cut engraving. The domed cover is topped by an urn-shaped finial. Leaves and scrolls are chased and engraved around the body near the cover. Two flutes appear on each side of the sugar bowl and are continued in the base. This sugar bowl is typical of Joseph Lownes' silver. Many of his surviving works are executed in the Classical style, and his trade card depicts silver of this type (Martha Grandy Fales, Early American Silver [New York: Funk and Wagnalls Publishing Co., Inc., 1970], p. 211). A tea caddy in the Garvan Collection at Yale has characteristics similar to the sugar bowl in the Moore Collection (Kathryn C. Buhler and Graham Hood, American Silver: Garvan and Other Collections in the Yale University Art Gallery, 2 vols. [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970], vol. II: Middle Colonies and the South, p. 224). It has an oval body fluted twice on each side, and the stepped domed cover has an urn finial. The initial R, engraved in bright-cut script on the front, is for the Francis Rawle family of Virginia (Gebelein, August 17, 1967).