[David Park Curry] I'm David Park Curry, curator of American Art, and we want you to look particularly today at a great big soup tureen by Charles Louis Boehme. There's virtually no ornament at all. He reiterates the shape of the vessel with a little cast finial at the top. There are two incredibly elegant, rather high strap handles, and it's on a foot and that's it. It's all about polished gleam and elegant form. It's incredibly rare, incredibly beautiful, a powerful piece, and it would've been prominently displayed on a sideboard or in a dining room. It was an object of great luxury. I think it's interesting how much shiny stuff was in the homes of the 17th, 18th, and well into the 19th centuries. The homes were far darker than the light levels that we're used to today. So any reflective service, a great big splash of silver on a tureen, or the spoons and forks lined up on the table, all of those things were chosen in part to reflect light.

[David Park Curry] In looking at it, I got the idea to take our Willowbrook parlor, which is one of only two documented oval parlors in all of historic Maryland, and use it to display silver, choosing pieces that like the room are inspired by neoclassical ideas and that use some of the same shapes and techniques of ornamentation. All the design ideas that we see in silver and in furniture and so forth make pretty direct reference to the antiquities of ancient Greece and Rome in some way.