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Can you help us identify this object? This long basket has apparently been in the Athenaeum since the nineteenth century. The only reference to it in the old records is a twentieth-century catalog entry which links it to a shield and spear from the island of Nias (off the coast of Sumatra), which were given in 1820. No examples like it have surfaced so far in other ethnographic collections. The Art and Artifacts Committee would be grateful for any leads which would help identify the origin of this basket. You may email us at: |
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Library, Third Floor
Joseph Sawtelle Reading Room
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Spotlight on Our A Silver Teapot |
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The Athenaeum acquired this high-style teapot by Jabez Baldwin and John Jones of Boston in December 2008. It is an important artifact for the Athenaeum since it was presented by the New Hampshire Fire and Marine Insurance Company to Captain George F. Blunt of Portsmouth for “his spirited and successful exertions in saving the ship Thomas Wilson when stranded on the Isle of Shoals in Feb. 1810.” The NHF & M Insurance Company built and occupied our building in 1805 and sold it to the Athenaeum in 1823 when the company went out of business. The Athenaeum archives contain the Company’s records, but, unfortunately, there is no mention of the gift in them. It was certainly given later than the event commemorated, since Baldwin and Jones were only in business together from1813 to 1819. George F. Blunt was a part owner of the Eudora which was wrecked on the coast of England in 1811. The ship was insured by the F & M Insurance Company, and two watercolors of the event made for the Company in support of the claim for damages came to the Athenaeum in 1823 and now hang in the Reading Room. |