Casting New Light on John McMullin and His Silver

By Linnard R. Hobler
Masters Degree Candidate – History of Decorative Arts,
Smithsonian Associates/Corcoran College of Art & Design, Washington, DC

Nardi Hobler stands beside the presentation silver made in 1799 for Dr. Philip Syng Physick on her visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 20, 2010 to examine McMullin silver in the collection. According to comments placed in the Met’s curatorial file, silver expert Ubaldo Vitali ranks the hot water urn pictured here, as the finest piece of surviving Federal silver.

In the summer of 2008, while working as an intern at the St. Louis Art Museum I discovered a beautiful bright-cut ladle and tea tongs in my silver drawer bearing the mark ‘IM,’ John McMullin. The cipher on them read ‘WL,’ intertwined. In an instant, I made the connection; ‘WL’ stood for William Linnard. Linnard’s wife Susannah turned out to be the older sister of John McMullin, so the silver had been made by McMullin for his brother-in-law. I was holding history and what would ultimately become my thesis topic in my hands, “From Local Artisan to Regional Supplier: John McMullin, Philadelphia Silversmith, 1765–1843.”

According to my family’s oral history, our silversmith ancestor had been Samuel Hildeburn, whose handsome portrait by John Neagle hung in my grandmother’s living room next to that of his wife, my namesake, Elizabeth Linnard. After completing an independent study in my master’s program at the Smithsonian Associates-Corcoran College of Art & Design, I learned instead that Hildeburn had been a successful merchant in Philadelphia who sold silver, jewelry, clocks and watches. Hildeburn’s father-in-law, Colonel William Linnard, had been a member of the Carpenters’ Company and Trustee of Old Pine Scots and Mariners Presbyterian Church. Through burial records at the Presbyterian Historical Society, I located the Linnard family resting place in Old Pine’s historic Colonial cemetery. Engraving on the obelisk-shaped tomb marker identified Linnard’s wife as Susannah McMullin along with five of their 11 children buried there.

Interior of McMullin cream pot from my personal collection showing silver rivets used to attach the upper collar to the body before soldering. A similar McMullin cream pot in Ruth Nutt’s collection uses this same technique. I am researching pieces with this detail in other collections. My thesis advisor, Jennifer Goldsborough, shared with me that French silversmiths employed this method.

My thesis targets include creation of a catalog of as much McMullin silver as possible drawn from many sources along with any clues about their provenance in order to profile his known customers. Curators David Barquist of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Beth Carver Wees of the Metropolitan Museum have each given me a warm welcome and access to examine all of their institutions’ McMullin silver and curatorial files. At the end of the summer, I had the pleasure to see and be photographed with McMullin’s greatest achievement: the magnificent presentation silver created to honor the work of Dr. Philip Syng Physick during Philadelphia’s second Yellow Fever epidemic—the hot water urn, large tray, and tea service acquired and re-united by the Met in 2009.

Nardi holds her most recent acquisition of her ancestor John McMullin’s silver beside a copy of his portrait by his nephew, Joseph Biays Ord, c. 1830 in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The McMullin ladle and tea tongs she found in her silver drawer in 2008.

Just days before at the Philadelphia City Archives, I combed eagerly through a year’s worth of the original minutes of the Board of Managers of the City and Marine Hospitals of Philadelphia from May 15, 1798 through April 22, 1799. On November 22, 1798, the first business item recorded was the resolution that “one thousand dollars… be applied to the purchase of an ornamental piece or pieces of plate to be presented to Doctr. Philip Syng Physick, as a testimony of the high sense which the Board entertain of his voluntary, benevolent, and important services… during the prevalence of the late malignant fever.”

The sum of $1,000 astounded me, but reading the name of one particular board member made my heart beat faster. My ancestor William Linnard’s name appeared almost daily as the work of the board pressed forward. While the minutes make no mention of who was to make the silver, Linnard’s brother-in-law received the commission, as he proudly had his name engraved on the back of the enormous tray: “John McMullin, FECIT, Phila. 1799.” For the 33-year-old McMullin, the accomplishment must have been bittersweet. His wife Mary Hutton and his father William McMullin had both died in the fall of 1797. McMullin’s two small children had perished in 1791.

McMullin Ostrich Cup from the collection of Ruth J. Nutt.

Other exciting discoveries filled my summer including the remarkable American silver of West coast collector Ruth J. Nutt. She owns upwards of 17 McMullin pieces including two handbag frames with original bags intact, and a rare, surviving silver frame on a pedestal base that holds an ostrich egg, quite similar to the one in Raphaelle Peale’s painting of the same subject.

In early September, I spent two weeks in the archives at Winterthur looking through their extensive Decorative Arts Photographic Collection (DAPC files), and at possible sources from their Rare Book collection that may well have provided suggested design direction to McMullin and other period silversmiths.

More than two hundred years after McMullin created a gleaming array of objects in his workshop, they survive in surprisingly large number in museum collections and in private hands. My research and telling the story of John McMullin is both a labor of love and scholarship, for in so doing I am expanding my family’s history and contributing to the decorative arts history of American silver. In that spirit and to the end, I am honored to have the support of the Decorative Arts Trust.

Strawberries and Ostrich Cup, Raphaelle Peale, 1822. Private collection.