Discussing the Dish Cross

Cecelia Eure, WPAMC ’24

While I unfortunately had to miss the WPAMC Southern trip this June, I had the pleasure of attending the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) Summer Institute in Winston Salem, NC. This year, the institute was focused on the Lowcountry, and our trip took our cohort of eight (along with our mentors from MESDA and beyond) to Charleston, Savannah, the Georgia Sea Islands, and all the way down to Kingsley Plantation (managed by the NPS) in Jacksonville, Florida. 

For the most part, the month was spent researching an object in MESDA’s collection that we each drew out of a *literal* top hat. Drawing our objects randomly was a new feature of the institute this year, whereas in the past fellows have self-selected their study objects. My object was a silver dish cross made in Charleston in the shop of Charles Wittich, probably in 1801 or 1802.

So what is a dish cross? A dish cross is a silver or silver plated four armed support for a, likely silver or porcelain, serving dish, and protects the table below. The arms move so as to allow for different sized dishes to rest on the top. Additionally, the dish cross that I studied had a spirit lamp in the middle of the four arms which was intended to be lit to keep the dish warm while it was waiting to be served. It is a decorative, difficult to maintain, means of controlling space and heat on the early American dining table.

The funny thing is that during my travels in the low country, I never saw another dish cross. The dish cross at MESDA was made by a German immigrant silversmith after an English form of silver and made for a federal period American market, making it truly a product of the Atlantic world. Most dish crosses that appear in museum collections today were produced in England, with a small number coming out of New York City. We know that Charlestonians were purchasing imported silver plated dish crosses and that Charlestonians tended to be Anglophiles, hence the English form. The creation of a piece like this made of solid silver is a sign of status, connections to the Atlantic world, identity in the early republic, and the work of free and enslaved laborers who made and maintained it. 

There is so much to say about the dish cross that there simply is not time to write about here, but I encourage everyone to keep an eye out for them on dining tables in historic homes.

¹ Eure, Cecelia. 2023. “Crossing the Atlantic: A Charleston Silver Dish Cross from the Shop of Charles Wittich.” Presented at the MESDA Summer Institute Fellows Symposium, Winston-Salem, NC, June 30.