A mug's tale
A once-prized, once-abandoned piece of Boston history finds its way to a new home - the MFA
The newest acquisition at the Museum of Fine Arts - an 18th-century silver mug by Boston silversmith Andrew Tyler - did not, in the end, travel very far: from the North End, where it was made, to the Fens, where it's now ensconced.
But the mug - which once played a bit part in the Battle of Bunker Hill - was almost auctioned off to the highest bidder along with other unclaimed property. The story of how it wound up in the museum's silver collection with other prized works by Tyler is a quintessentially Boston tale involving old connections, the state Treasurer's office, a Beacon Hill antiquarian, and a couple of long-shot coincidences.
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"It was saved by a thread," said Mason Dix Harris, the mug's recently-discovered owner who has just donated it to the MFA where it will be exhibited in the new American wing when it opens next year.
The mug in question is no flimsy tin cup: It's a solid, elegant vessel with a serpentine handle and a coat of arms bearing a Latin family motto: "Dum spiro spero," "While I breathe, I hope." The words seem fitting for an object that had gotten lost in history.
The mug's last known address was the Abandoned Property Division of the State Treasury. Records show a couple named Mason and Zaydee Harris had placed it in Safe Deposit Box 1074 of the Fitchburg branch of the Fleet Bank, though it's not clear when.
In the spring of 2003, however, it found its way to James Roy III, tangible property manager for the Treasury department. (By state law, banks have the right to remove the contents of a box if its rental fee hasn't been paid for a year, and must transfer it to the Treasury after seven years.)
"The rent hadn't been paid for some time," said Roy. Inside were a black bowling bag, a "peach checkered dusty blanket," a silver teapot - and the mug, accompanied by an inventory list describing it, inaccurately, as a "pewter mug with engraving on the side."
Roy, who is responsible for processing unclaimed property, is accustomed to sifting through old coins, collectibles, maybe the occasional war medal. Once in a while there's a surprise, like the time he unearthed a 49-ounce platinum bar.
But there was something about the mug - its light weight, flared handle, and engraved crest - that caught his eye. In a previous life, Roy was a US Marine assigned to the White House military office, which is "very rich in heritage-type pieces," he said. Later he served in the State Department, specifically the Diplomatic Reception Rooms used for official entertaining and rich in museum-caliber American furnishings; over time he developed a keen interest in the items he was guarding.
"One of the key things in the training of any Marine, especially those assigned to the White House, is attention to detail," said Roy, who still speaks with the precise diction of a man in the military. "I've seen items of a similar nature, especially in the map room of the White House. . . . I knew right away this is not something you come across in a daily report. This was a standout."
But whose mug was it? There was a clue in the safe deposit box in the form of a detailed four-page note, unsigned but on stationery with a Fitchburg address, and dated May 1976. In messy, loopy scrawl was what appeared to be the mug's hastily-written life story, including references to "a famous early Boston silversmith Andrew Tyler" and to the mug's rescue after a Charlestown house "burned to the ground" and "the family fled from the British troops."
With no heirs listed, it wasn't much to go on, but it was enough to take action. "We briefed the treasurer," said Roy. "We elevated the security around that item immediately."
Treasurer Timothy Cahill assigned an investigator in his office to track down the Harrises in 2004. All he learned was that they were deceased. "The trail was cold," said Roy. Cahill also asked Roy's office to have the mug examined by an appraiser, in preparation for what was shaping up to be its ultimate fate - the Treasury's first-ever abandoned property eBay auction in November 2005.
"The appraiser we usually use saw it and confirmed that this was clearly not something you would come across at Macy's," Roy said. "It needed a second look by a silver specialist."
But time was running short. The three-week auction was to start Nov. 14. The appointment with the Beacon Hill appraisal firm B. Fletcher & Associates was Nov. 21, after the auction had started but scant hours before the mug was to be listed on eBay in the last group of 25 lots.
When specialist Alexander Goriansky saw it, he easily identified it as an early-18th-century Boston mug made by the prolific North End silversmith Andrew Tyler. What gave him pause, though, was the familiar Fitchburg address on the note that had been stuffed in the mug.
"I found myself telling James Roy, 'You know, I think I know these people,' " said Goriansky, a quintessential Beacon Hill antiquarian in a herringbone jacket who was interviewed at his bibliophiles' society, The Club of Odd Volumes, near Louisburg Square. "I went to school with their son."
"These people" were the Harris family of Fitchburg - Mason Dix Harris and Zaydee DeJonge Harris, who had been director of the Fitchburg Art Museum from 1942-1973; she died in 1995 at the age of 96. They had one son, also named Mason Dix Harris, who by an improbable coincidence had attended Groton prep school in Groton at the same time as Goriansky. Goriansky hadn't seen the younger Harris since the 1950s but was able to track him down through alumni connections; he was now a retired English professor living in Vancouver.
"I was just astonished," said Harris in a telephone interview. "My mother had told me stories about this family heirloom as a child but she must have decided it was too valuable to keep in the house, so she put it in the bank. And in her old age, she forgot about it."
He didn't forget about the mug, however, although he assumed she must have sold it. He vividly remembered the stories she'd told him about it when he was a child, stories she also spelled out in the note she left in the bank. The mug, it appears, was made by Tyler sometime in the early to mid-1700s for a highly-placed local judge named Robert Auchmuty Jr., famous for being one of the defense attorneys during the Boston Massacre, with co-counsel John Adams.
For reasons unknown, Auchmuty relinquished it. "He had to leave Boston in a hurry because he was a loyalist; he got the boot," said Harris. "It's possible the mug went from his family to mine when he had to leave. It might have been a fire sale situation."
Somehow it ended up in the possession of Harris's ancestor, Thaddeus Mason Harris, a Unitarian minister who grew up in Charlestown. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British burned Charlestown and the family fled from their home with only a few prized possessions, including the mug. It was handed down through several generations to Harris's father, a naval officer and businessman who died in 1987.
And now it belonged to Harris, though he wasn't sure what to do with it.
"If I took possession of it, it would go back in a bank vault - I would never have the nerve to sell it," he said. "Eventually its history would be forgotten." He dithered over it for a few years while it remained in a vault in Boston. Finally he decided to donate it to the MFA, which he used to visit as a child with his mother. "The mug is part of the history of Boston and ought to be available to the public there," he said.
There was no argument from Gerry Ward, the MFA's senior curator for decorative arts, and a silver specialist. "We're always pumped and jacked when someone wants to give us something that fits nicely into our collection," he explained.
The MFA owns five pieces by Tyler, Ward said last month, the day before he saw the mug for the first time. They include a porringer - a one-handled eating and drinking vessel - and a spout cup used by children and invalids. "The individual objects fit in like pieces of a puzzle," he said. "As a stand-alone, they are just a curiosity. As part of a focused collection, they make a great deal of sense, and help you understand the entire life of an artist or craftsman."
The next morning - pumped and jacked - Ward drove to a state office building outside of Boston where the mug was held in a Fort Knox vault in a dimly lit storeroom. On the wall was a poster of another much sought-after mug, that of Whitey Bulger.
Cahill, the treasurer, was there to present the silver mug to Ward.
It was tarnished and a little smaller than he expected, but Ward was obviously delighted. Holding it gingerly with a glove, he noted its markings - the Auchmuty family coat of arms, the air vent to let heat escape when Tyler cast the handle, the scratch weight etched in the bottom: six troy ounces and 17 pennyweight.
"Quite handsome, isn't it?" he said. "It's a really sweet little thing. It will shine up real nice."
Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com. 
