Sauce Boat (1743): Art, History and Details

Sauce Boat (1743) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Nicolas Duclos (1699–1755), master silversmith in 1726.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

When heated sauces began to be served separately from meat and fish towards the end of the 17th century, sauce boats began to be used as another piece of elaborately designed silver dinner services popular in European courts. This sauce boat reflects early models in the shape of a nef, a condiment vessel which derives its name from a ship of the same shape.

Object facts

• Title: Sauce Boat
• Date: 1743
• Creator attribution: Nicolas Duclos (1699–1755), master silversmith in 1726
• Culture: France, Paris
• Type: Silver
• Technique: silver
• Dimensions: Overall: 7.7 x 22.9 cm (3 1/16 x 9 in.); Average: 17.8 cm (7 in.); Base: 9.9 x 7.1 cm (3 7/8 x 2 13/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1940.21

A detail from the museum

This sauceboat would likely have been accompanied by a tray and a spoon used to skim grease from the surface of the sauce.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. S. Prentiss Baldwin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foote, Helen. "French Silver." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 27, no. 6 (June 1940): 87-90

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.