Tea Kettle

Gorham Manufacturing Company · c. 1900

Medium

Copper, mixed metals, and wood

Original size

Teapot: 19.1 × 21.2 × 16.1 cm (7 1/2 × 8 3/8 × 6 3/8 in.); Warming stand: 8.3 × 14 × 14 cm (3 1/4 × 5 1/2 × 5 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

This tea kettle, with its warm copper body and carefully wrought mixed-metal detailing, stands as a refined example of American decorative art at the turn of the twentieth century. Gorham Manufacturing Company, founded in Providence, Rhode Island in 1831, became one of the most celebrated metalworking firms in the United States, known for bringing European craft traditions into dialogue with emerging American and Japanese influences. By around 1900, Gorham's artisans were producing objects that moved well beyond utility — forms that rewarded close looking, with surface textures, inlaid metals, and wooden handles chosen as much for their visual harmony as their function. The combination of copper, mixed metals, and wood in this kettle reflects that careful integration of material and form that distinguished Gorham's finest decorative work from mass-produced contemporaries. Gorham's mixed-metal techniques of this period drew directly on Japonesque aesthetics that had swept through American decorative arts following the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where Japanese craftsmanship first reached a wide domestic audience. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates the kettle's layered surfaces and tonal warmth into paint with the same patience the original craftsmen brought to metal — giving you a work that honours both the object and the skill behind it.