$40 estate auction item discovered by early African American silversmith

A unique silver bap boat made by pioneering African-American silversmith Peter Bentzon was discovered at a Minnesota estate sale in a $40 box labeled “silver plate” and later sold for $24,000 to an as-yet-unnamed “prestigious American institution.” The young buyer spotted the Bentzon sign and realized he had hit the real estate sales jackpot.

A papu boat is a shallow, elongated bowl with a pouring rim on one side, used for feeding gruel (aka papu) to babies or sick people. Barb is a highly digestible nutritional supplement that can be given to people who are too young or too sick to chew it. The boat-like shape and pouring lip make holding the bowl and feeding easier. This one is less than five inches long and three inches wide. It weighs 69 grams. The flat bottom of the boat is stamped with the capital letters P. BENTZON embedded in a rectangle. Its history dates back to between 1810 and 1820.

Peter Bentzon was the only African American silversmith working in early America, and his silverware can be identified by his personal markings. He was born on St Thomas to an Afro-Caribbean mother and a white European father, believed to be Norwegian Jacob Bentzon, a lawyer and royal advocate on the island. Peter was eight years old when he was sent to Philadelphia to become an apprentice silversmith. He worked there from 1799 to 1806, then moved back to the Caribbean and opened his own store in Christiansted, St. Croix. He worked there for 10 years, married Rachel de la Motta, a free woman of color from a prominent family, and eventually gave birth to seven children.

Bengtsson and his family moved back and forth between St. Croix and Philadelphia. He owned an active trading business and silversmith shop. In Philadelphia, he must have been mistaken for a white man, since the 1820 census listed both him and his mulatto wife as white. They last appeared in the census in 1850 and there is no record of his death.

Fewer than 30 pieces of Bentzon silverware are known to exist. Most of them were small cutlery (teaspoons) or utensils like nutmeg graters, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2021 for $40,000. Two of his largest and best-known works are a pair of identical teapots made in 1817 for Rebecca Dawson, a member of a Philadelphia abolitionist Quaker family. One is now in the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum; another is in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and even his teaspoon is in the museum. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has one and another famous work: a footed cup he made in 1841 for the Rev. Benjamin Lucock, a gift from the principal and teacher of the Sunday School at St. John’s Episcopal Church in St. Croix.