AIC's 51st Annual Meeting

While the 1700s-1800s English elite adorned their tables with silver tea services and vermeil (silver gilded with gold) salt dishes, the working class treasured the “silvered” (or silver-luster) ceramics produced by ceramics potteries.

Our questions regarding material compositions began when we were cleaning a collection of vessels for Dr. Elizabeth Williams’ exhibition, Trading Earth: Ceramics, Commodities, and Commerce. This show includes functional home goods and luxurious objects from a global perspective. While preparing the pieces, the ones that caught our attention were ceramic bodied pitchers with metallic, reflective glazes that mimicked the surfaces of vessels made from silver. Wanting to know more about the best way to handle and clean these objects, we sought to find out the chemical makeup of the glazes.

We called upon Dr. Catherine Cooper, who works in Natchichones, Louisiana at the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. Using a Bruker X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) unit we analyzed our five subjects. Elemental analysis of the objects revealed that the silver coloring was created using heavy metals including arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb) as well as trace amounts of platinum (Pt). This information illuminates not only the need to flag these objects for safety and handling in Museum+, but also raises questions about the health and safety of the artisans who made these objects and the individuals who used them.

We plan to continue our research and expand our study of the 20 silver lusterware objects. The collaborative efforts of curators, conservators, and scientists makes it possible to create an holistic interpretation of these imitation silver objects.