A SILVER-MOUNTED COPPER BISCUIT BARREL

Joseph Heinrich was an important arts-and-crafts movement metal worker of the early 20th century. Though his work is often unsigned, the hammered copper with the distinctively bucolic addition of rabbit-form ornament is easily identified. Heinrich often retailed his work through firms like Tiffany & Co. and Gorham Mfg. Co., whose clients were newly interested in the possibility of American design as an evolving movement. Indeed, in Silver in America, 1840-1940 A Century of Splendor, 1994, Charles Venable cites Heinrich's work as "one rare exception" to the scarcity of design in "an overt 'American' aesthetic" (p. 197).

This biscuit barrel and the water pitcher and mugs offered as lot 8 are rarely encountered forms.