This traveling mug probably belonged to Israel Corse.

This pitcher belonged to the donor's grandfather, Henry Chauncey (1795-1863), a merchant from New York. He was a leader in the construction of the Panama Railroad in 1851. There is a monument to him, for his work on this project at Colon, Panama Canal Zone.

This pair of pitchers belonged to the donor's grandfather, Henry Chauncey (1795-1863), a merchant from New York. He was a leader in the construction of the Panama Railroad in 1851. There is a monument to him, for his work on this project at Colon, Panama Canal Zone.

As one of New York's earliest luxury retailers, Tiffany, Young & Ellis offered patrons a wide assortment of stylish table silver. This water pitcher is an example of the firm's Asian-inspired silver, sold beginning about 1850. The techniques used to construct this pitcher's hand-raised body and elaborately hand-chased decoration became increasingly uncommon after the 1850s, when such work was reserved for only the finest and most costly custom-made silver. The scheme of a Chinese landscape on a textured, pebbled background recalls eighteenth-century Rococo Chinoiserie but also anticipates the revival of Chinese, Japanese, and Middle Eastern forms and ornament by American artists and craftsmen after the Civil War.

Badges identifying members of an organization or society typically take the form of a two-sided medal pinned to the lapel or worn around the neck. When the Walpole Society met in 1931 to choose an insignia, however, it rejected a standard medal as commonplace and impractical, given its tendency to turn over and display the reverse rather than the obverse. Instead, the specially appointed committee settled upon a gorget, a piece of armor originally designed to protect the neck from sword thrusts and other attacks. Three distinguished members of the Walpole Society wore this gorget. The founding member and first owner was Hollis French (1868-1940), by trade an engineer and innovator in the field of interior lighting, and by avocation a collector and scholar of American furniture and silver. The second owner was Russell Hawes Kettell (1890-1958), a teacher of fine arts at the Middlesex School in Massachusetts. The third and final Walpolean to don the gorget was Irving Sands Olds (1887-1963), a trustee of the New-York Historical Society and its president from 1962 to his death in 1963.