The Barge of Venus Electroplate Centerpiece

Designed 1876 by the Middletown Silver Plate Co., Middletown, Connecticut. The large rectangular plinth base is engraved with flowers and fitted with a large coquille-form barge drawn by swans and piloted by Cupid through cattails, with attendant musical putti at the corners.

Catalog Note: This model was first shown at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, where "the novel and striking grace of the design made it the object of much attention... the figures of the swans and of the driver Cupid are neatly modeled, and, it must be confessed, in the highest degree artistic in in effect. The execution of the feathery coats of the swans is very elaborate, aiming to be natural, not conventional, and imitating very successfully the appearance of the wings and bodies."

Literature Note: Gems of the Centennial Exhibition (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1877), pp. 17-18 (illustrated).
Katharine Morrison McClinton, Collecting American Victorian Antiques (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966), pp. 205-206 (illustrated).