# The Bryant Vase > Tiffany & Co. - 1875-1876 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/tiffany-and-co/bryant-vase-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-01 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Tiffany & Co. - **Date:** 1875-1876 - **Medium:** Silver and gold - **Dimensions:** 33 1/2 x 14 x 11 5/16 in. (85.1 x 35.6 x 28.7 cm); 452 oz. 16 dwt. (14,084.2 g) - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** American, Gilded Age - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A silver and gold presentation vase, 33 1/2 inches high and weighing just under 29 pounds, made by Tiffany & Co. of New York in 1875-1876 to honor the poet and Evening Post editor William Cullen Bryant on his eightieth birthday. The Metropolitan Museum's own record names the hands behind it: designed by James Horton Whitehouse, chased by Eugene J. Soligny, with five medallions by the young Augustus Saint-Gaudens, then newly returned to New York and still two years from the Farragut commission that would make his name.The Century Association's own archives identify the commissioners as a committee of Bryant's friends including twenty-five fellow Centurions, continuing a tribute the club had already paid him once, at his seventieth birthday in 1864. Tiffany displayed the finished vase at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, and Bryant himself gave it to the Metropolitan Museum in 1877, making it the first piece of American silver the Museum ever acquired.Several details repeated across secondary web sources describing this commission, including the name of a nineteenth-century businessman as the committee's chairman and a specific 1875 house-call date, could not be corroborated against the Century Association's own institutional history and are contradicted by that individual's recorded date of death. This record states what is documented and marks the rest as open. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1874-1876** Commissioned by a committee of William Cullen Bryant's friends, including twenty-five members of the Century Association `[documented]` (commission) The Century Association's own archives record that, ten years after a festival marking Bryant's seventieth birthday in 1864, a committee of his friends including twenty-five Centurions commissioned the vase from Tiffany's for his eightieth birthday. Several secondary sources name a specific individual as committee chairman and date the event to November 1875; that claim is contradicted by the named individual's recorded death in November 1874 and is not corroborated by the Century Association's own account, so this record omits it. - **1876** William Cullen Bryant `[documented]` (presentation and public display) Tiffany & Co. completed and presented the vase to Bryant in 1876, and displayed it that year at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia, confirmed by a contemporary chromolithograph and an official exhibition-photographer stereograph, both naming the vase specifically. - **1877-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (gift) Bryant himself gave the vase to the Metropolitan Museum in 1877, credited as "Gift of William Cullen Bryant, 1877," the first piece of American silver the Museum acquired. Lent to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., June-October 1978, for an exhibition marking the centenary of Bryant's death; otherwise remained in the Museum's collection, now on view in the American Wing. ## Open questions - A Met curator's own published essay states that a design competition was held for the vase, without saying who competed or how Whitehouse's design was chosen; that competition's particulars are not documented in any source consulted here. - What amount, if any, did the 1874 subscription actually raise, and who beyond the twenty-five named Centurions subscribed to it? No source consulted gives a total or a full list. - Did an individual chair or lead the organizing committee? A name recurring in secondary web sources is contradicted by that person's recorded date of death relative to the date usually given for the event, and is not corroborated by the Century Association's own institutional history, which names no individual. - Did the committee's house call and public announcement take place in 1874, consistent with the Century Association's own account of Bryant's actual eightieth birthday, or in 1875, as most secondary sources state? The sources consulted disagree and this record could not resolve it against a primary contemporary account. - Was any individual fretwork motif or medallion scene meant to evoke a specific named Bryant poem beyond The Battlefield, whose line is inlaid on the neck? No source found ties the apple-blossom fretwork, for instance, to The Planting of the Apple-Tree or any other single title. - What critical reception did the vase receive at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition itself? No period review of the piece specifically was located. - Where are the two ca. 1875 electrotype copies of the vase now, the one given to the Century Association and the one given to the Village of Cummington, Massachusetts? - Has the vase been lent again since its 1978 loan to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery? No further loan is documented in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record for The Bryant Vase, accession 77.9a, b, object ID 1029. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object record 1029 (The Bryant Vase). - [3] Wikipedia, 'Bryant Vase.' A stub article drawing on the Met's own object page; flagged for replacement with primary Museum and exhibition-catalogue sources as they are located. - [4] Century Association Archives, Member Directory, William Cullen Bryant, Archivist's Notes. - [5] National Gallery of Art, object record for 'The Bryant Commemorative Vase - Tiffany & Co., New York,' chromolithograph by Clay, Cosack & Co. after Tiffany & Co., 1877, plate 26 of Treasures of Art, Industry and Manufacture Represented at the International Exhibition, 1876 (C. B. Norton, ed.). - [6] New York Public Library Digital Collections, 'Bryant vase, Tiffany & Co., N.Y.,' stereograph by the Centennial Photographic Co., 1876, Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views. - [7] Smithsonian Institution, exhibition record for 'William Cullen Bryant,' National Portrait Gallery, June 12-October 27, 1978. - [8] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record for 'Full-size pattern for facsimile of back half of body of Bryant Vase,' accession 1985.191.3b, Gift of Tiffany & Company, 1985. - [9] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record for '1526- Bryant Vase-Tiffany & Co. New York,' albumen silver print by the Centennial Photographic Company, Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, accession 63.350.651.579. - [10] The Magazine Antiques, 'Cosmopolitan Craftsman,' on Edward C. Moore's direction of Tiffany & Co.'s silver division and the Bryant Vase's design team. - [11] Wikipedia, 'Eugene J. Soligny.' Tertiary source for the chaser's training, career and patent; flagged for replacement with a primary Tiffany or Met curatorial source. - [12] National Gallery of Art, artist biography of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. - [13] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record for The Adams Vase, by Paulding Farnham for Tiffany & Co., accession 04.1a, b (object ID 35), Gift of Edward D. Adams, 1904. - [14] Beth Carver Wees, Department of American Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Nineteenth-Century American Silver,' Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, October 2004. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.