Francis W. Cooper: silversmith

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 1999 by Jennifer M. Swope

Francis W. Cooper worked in New York City from 1842(1) until September 26, 1890, when a fire destroyed his silversmithing shop.(2) Noted for his communion silver, he also made pitchers, tea sets, and other secular silver forms. Given the length of his career it is remarkable how little of his secular work is known relative to the large number of Gothic revival communion objects still found in the churches for which they were made. Like many independent silversmiths of his day, Cooper worked for large retailers such as Tiffany and Company, but as those wares usually bear only the retailers' marks they often cannot be attributed to the maker. By contrast, Cooper struck most of his communion silver with his own mark, which often includes his name and his shop's address at 151 Amity Sweet (now West Third Street) in New York City.

In 1851 Cooper began making Gothic revival communion silver for the Protestant Episcopal churches of the diocese of New York. During the next three decades Protestant Episcopal parishes from Maine to Maryland commissioned what Cooper called "communion plate in true ecclesiastical style."(3) He made most of the communion silver for Trinity Parish in New York City, which was the largest and wealthiest Episcopal parish in the United States. In the past, Cooper's most ornate enameled and jeweled communion sets were seen as representative of his work. However, his range becomes apparent when the elaborate sets are placed in the context of the larger number of relatively plain sets he made.

His role as the official silversmith of the New-York Ecclesiological Society between 1851 and its dissolution in 1855 explains the range of ornamentation found on his communion silver and the widespread presence of his silver in Episcopal churches in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The New York society was founded in 1848 and modeled after the Cambridge Camden Society (renamed the Ecclesiological Society in 1845), its counterpart in the Church of England. Both societies promoted the "science of ecclesiology," which was defined as "the study of Christian Art and Antiques.... [relating] to the architecture, arrangement, and decoration of churches; the recognition of correct principles and taste in the erection of new churches."(4) For the ecclesiologists, correct meant Gothic revival, and, although the organization's influence on American Gothic revival church architecture has been documented, its pivotal role in the development of Cooper's communion silver has remained obscure.(5)

As the American society's official silversmith Cooper had access to the Gothic revival designs and common silver produced by the English society. He then established a stylistic formula for his communion silver that changed little even after the New York society ceased to exist.

In his association with the society Cooper worked closely with the Reverend John Henry Hopkins Jr. (1820-1891), who was charged by the society with "the superintendence of all the Church Plate and work in metal, to be executed under the sanction of the Society."(6) As such, Hopkins oversaw Coopers production, played a key role in obtaining commissions for him, negotiated prices, and acted as the liaison between Cooper and his clients during production. Between 1851 and 1855, the society estimated that it had commissioned more than twenty thousand dollars worth of communion silver from Cooper.(7) His last work for the society was an ornately enameled, engraved, and chased communion set for the newly built Trinity Chapel that Cooper and his then partner, Richard Fisher, completed in 1856 (P1. I and Figs. 1, 2). Hopkins promoted their work by including a chromolithograph of the footed paten from the set in the society's final publication and showing the actual object at its last meeting. Although Hopkins described Cooper and Fisher as "the only silversmiths in this country who have ever done much in the way of truly ecclesiastical art,"(8) he claimed much of the credit for their success. When the society initially commissioned communion silver, Hopkins reported that the quality of the craftsmen's work had shown slow but steady improvement, reaching "a highly respectable degree of skill" only because of Hopkins's "freely given" instruction.(9) After a year the society estimated that "a little further practice...will make our [communion] plate second to none in the world."(10)

By 1855 Hopkins claimed that the Trinity Chapel set constituted "the most elaborate and costly specimens of Church metal-work yet done in this country."(11) It cost approximately sixteen hundred dollars,(12) which included the services of the enameler, engraver, chaser, casemaker, and blacksmith. The chaser is identified only as a German named Segel. His work is most evident in the alms basin in the gadrooning and six angels around each of the chalice bowls (see Pl. I and Fig. 2).

Henry P. Horlor (1823-after 1881) made the alternating enameled panels on each chalice foot and the enameled medallions at the center of each paten. He advertised as a "Heraldic and Ornamental Engraver and Fancy Enameller,"(13) and had collaborated with Cooper in 1852 to make a chalice and paten (Pl. III) that am part of a ten-piece set for Grace Church in Brooklyn, New York. The chalice, which was called the "crowning piece"(14) of the set, has the same arrangement of enameled panels on the foot as the Trinity Chapel chalices. Hopkins was pleased with his "discover" of Horlor because Horlor had "done most of the engraving and enamelling for the English Ecclesiological Society in London" before immigrating to New York.(15)