The Metalwork Collection includes examples of gold, silver, silverplate, iron, pewter, copper, brass, and bronze, from elegant soup tureens to utilitarian kitchenware and tools.

With more than 2,000 American and English pieces, the dining and ornamental silver collection includes examples by prolific 19th-century American manufacturers including Samuel Kirk & Sons, the Gorham Manufacturing Company, and Dominck and Haff, and retailers such as M. W. Galt & Brothers and Harris & Shafer in Washington, D.C., and Black, Starr & Frost in Manhattan.

The Metalwork Collection provides a superb study of the evolution of styles, forms, and techniques, from the fabrication of a wrought-silver cake basket and sugar bowl by Georgetown silversmith and jeweler Charles Alexander Burnett, to the highly ornamental Rococo Revival services chased and engraved by the New York firm of Eoff & Shepard.

Other highlights include a beaker by Burnett and partner John Rigden, engraved with Martha Peter’s name; a pair of ca. 1770 silverplated branching candelabra made in Sheffield, England; a partial tea service by English silversmith Hester Bateman; a pair of rare strawberry compotes made ca. 1855-1860 by Eoff & Shepard; and over 20 pieces of sterling given on the occasion of Anna Williams’s marriage to Armistead Peter Jr., in 1894.