St Michael's Communion Silver

These two early 18th-century American examples of a silver communion service descended in the ownership of St. Michael's Church. Both were made in New York: the Alms Basin (9 3/8 inches in diameter, c. 1702-1708) by Jacobus Vanderspiegel (1668-1708); and the Chalice (7 1/2 inches high, c. 1702-1713), by Bartholomew Le Roux. Le Roux, a Huguenot, left Holland (where he probably trained) for London in 1685 and not long after moved to New York. The first of three generations of New York silversmiths, his work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[credit: Collection of the New Jersey State Museum, acquired 1974]