“It lived its life in a Gump’s box,” Elizabeth Tinling said last week about her antique teapot and referring to an old San Francisco retailer. She grew up with the silver piece and was warned that it “makes terrible tea.”
Since its museum-quality provenance was discovered on “Antiques Roadshow,” its owner is looking for a better home than a Gump’s box, and the silver teapot has made its way back east for the first time in 275 years.
“Maybe it’s time for it to have a home out on Long Island,” Ms. Tinling said, musing that she may lend it for display at several museums in the future — following its tenancy at Mulford Farm, that is.
While she said she had always heard tales of the teapot’s history, it really came to light after her mother took it to a taping of PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow” in Portland, Ore., in 1998. Christopher Hartop, a silver expert with Christie’s auction house, was smitten with the object.
After the episode aired, two women, one from Illinois and one from Florida, contacted Ms. Tinling to further report its connection to East Hampton and the Mulford family.
While visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art about seven years ago, Ms. Tinling said, she and her husband were discussing their teapot while wandering the silver room. A docent overheard their conversation, remembered the teapot from “Antiques Roadshow,” and put the couple in touch with Preservation Long Island in Cold Spring Harbor and finally Steve Long of the East Hampton Historical Society.
Ms. Tinling’s teapot was crafted by Elias Pelletreau, an 18th-century Southampton silversmith who, while not as well known as Paul Revere, is celebrated as a significant silversmith of the time. An exhibition at the Southampton History Museum includes some of his works and a re-creation of his workshop.
While the teapot is valued at around $45,000, its historical significance far outweighs its monetary value, landing it under glass at the Mulford Farm. It was crafted for David and Phoebe Mulford in 1751, thought to be part of a set that has since been separated.
Col. David Mulford led a regiment of 768 men in the Revolutionary War and was one of the largest owners of enslaved people on the East End. The house and farmstead on James Lane are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. David and Phoebe Mulford’s son Matthew inherited the teapot and passed it along to his son Charles, who passed it on to his son Robert, who married Henrietta Lester.
Ms. Tinling said a charcoal painting of Robert and Henrietta hung in her house all her life, and while she knew the couple by name, she did not know they had once been the owners of the teapot. The teapot was passed down through each generation, until Ms. Tinling’s Aunt Mary, who lived in Manhattan, passed it on to Ms. Tinling’s mother in the 1940s.
Although Ms. Tinling is connected to the Mulford family, she visited East Hampton for the first time just this month. She has lived in Bethesda, Md., since the 1980s.
The teapot is available for viewing at the Mulford Farm Thursday to Monday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Sept. 6, and Thursdays and Fridays after that through Oct. 2.
