Samuel Kirk
Pitcher
1827
Scroll
Samuel Kirk
Pitcher
1827
Physical Qualities
Silver, ivory, lid closed: 7 3/8 × 5 1/2 × 3 1/2 in. (18.7 × 14 × 8.9 cm.)
lid open: 4 1/8 × 3 × 1 1/4 in. (10.5 × 7.6 × 3.2 cm.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Ellen Howard Bayard
Object Number
1939.208
Racist stereotypes of Native people circulated in the 19th century through objects made for American homes. This pitcher for serving hot milk—made by Baltimore-based silversmith Samuel Kirk—shows a white person’s perception of how Native people and their lives transformed after European colonization. On one side, a Native man with a shaved head and feather headdress crouches low to the ground while hunting with a bow-and-arrow. The other side shows a Native man holding a Western shotgun and wearing a European-style shirt and long pants in place of his traditional fur clothing and headdress. Both images fail to offer true insight into the complexities of colonization’s impact on Native people. Instead, objects like these diminish and oversimplify Native representation by treating their experiences as decoration.
Baltimore Museum of Art by bequest, 1939; Ellen Howard Bayard (1833-1911) by descent
AMW Reinstallation 2014
American Wing Rotations 2020
American Wing Rotations 2024
American Wing Rotations 2025
Jennifer Faulds Goldsborough, "Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Maryland Silver in the Collection of The Baltimore Museum of Art." Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1975. p. 139, ill.
Inscribed: RECTO: Engraved in script "WLG" on pitcher VERSO: Engraved "crest" on pitcher (in dexter hand a scroll of paper within a garland of laurel proper)(Gilmer or Gilmour of Scotland)
Markings: Marked underneath pitcher "SAM L KIRK / F / S.K. 11. oz"
