Images(5)

Punch Ladle

Date1740-1770

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Williamsburg (possibly)

MediumSilver and wood

DimensionsOverall: 12 1/8"; Diameter of bowl: 2 9/16"; Depth of bowl: 1"

Credit LineGift of A. Jefferson Lewis III in memory of Elizabeth Neville Miller and Margaret Prentis Miller Conner

Object number2023-101

DescriptionPunch ladle composed of a round bowl with a slightly everted thin lip soldered to a plain tapered socket with a heart-shaped repair patch. Stepped wooden handle, topped with a knop and a ball separated by a narrow moulding, and tipped with a mushroom-shaped finial.
Label TextIn an age where every drink seemingly required its own specialized paraphernalia, punch was no different. With the punch bowl came the strainer, and an array of elegant vessels from which to drink it from. Dispensing it from the former into the latter was the punch ladle, usually of silver and mounted with a handle of different material like wood or the baleen of a whale. Delicate and light, it was not to be confused with its stout cousin the soup ladle.

Colonial Virginians loved punch as much as anyone in London or the larger cities to the North, and sought the appropriate ladles to accompany and compliment their punch bowls. While silversmiths in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia made ladles to rival the most fashionable rococo examples coming from Britain, those made in Virginia tended to be plain and serviceable.

This punch ladle is no less elegant, though not ornate or complicated in form, and is believed to have been made in the Tidewater area. It descended in the Prentis family of Williamsburg, and may have been made here. It shows the wear and repair one would expect for an item used and lovingly preserved in one family for 250 years.
ProvenancePossible chain of decent; William Prentis (1699-1765) to his son Joseph Prentis I (1754-1809) to Joseph Prentis II (1783-1851) to Peter Bowdoin Prentis (1820-1889) to his daughter Martha Josephine Prentis Causey (1845-1909) to her daughter Martha Josephine Causey Miller (1878-1969) to her daughters Elizabeth "Soony" Neville Miller (1914-2003) and Margaret Prentis Miller Connor (1905-2000), and then by bequest to the donor.