: "Pewter at Colonial Williamsburg," a long-running exhibition at
the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, assembles for display
more than 250 pieces from the notable collection of the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation (CWF), many of which are usually kept in
storage or used to furnish various houses on the site. John D.
Davis, senior curator of metals, organized the exhibition and
prepared the accompanying scholarly catalog of around 400
objects, which was published with the help of the Sara Lee
Corporation.
As would have been the case in colonial Williamsburg, the
majority of the material in the exhibition and catalog was made
not in America but in England. In fact, CWF owns one of the
finest collections of British pewter in the United States. Davis
explains, "A conscious choice was made from the beginning that
English pewter was perhaps more appropriate. Early writers like
Ledlie Irwin Laughlin, who wrote Pewter in America, Its Makers
and Their Marks, first published in 1940, make it very clear
that most pewter produced in this country was made in the middle
and northern colonies, while the South produced relatively little
pewter.
"It's not that we didn't use pewter here - we used as much as
anyone else - but we depended on the importation of pewter.
Household inventories indicate that individuals occasionally did
own molds for casting a basic plate or dish or spoon for their
own use."
