1857

Presentation Urn with Cover

In 1856, after a train collision on the North Pennsylvania Railroad killed over fifty children and injured more than one hundred, John Welsh, then president of the railroad, donated a large sum of money to a relief fund for the victims. A year later the railroad honored Welsh with this imposing covered urn. The chased C-scrolls, flowers, ruffled shells, cabochons, and volutes of the bracket feet, and the leafy foliage and masks of the handles were all trademarks of the mid-nineteenth-century revival of Rococo silver design. Each element was individually worked and the complex composition was made possible only by the use of an excessive amount of silver.