A wonderfully detailed, high relief, acid etched, Tiffany rugby football flask made in 1891/1892 for Dr. William Palmer Wesselhoeft. Wesselhoeft was a Harvard trained physician (MD in 1857) with ties to Boston University School of Medicine, where he and another four or five of his close Wesselhoeft relatives, who were also MDs, were working. This flask was presented to him before his planned world travels in 1893-1894, as inscribed on the flask. Also inscribed on the flask, translated from German “Travel around the world” and “Never full or never empty”. There are records of him in Rome and Venice and of having to abandon plans for going up the Nile in 1894.
Interestingly, his son, William Fessenden Wesselhoeft (also a trained Harvard physician) played for the Harvard varsity football
team in 1882 (MD in 1887).
Tiffany’s craftsman, lacking familiarity with rugby football
borrowed from contemporary publication’s illustrations. We have not done a
serious search as yet, but should be able to identify the source of the etching
on this flask. Publications such as The Century Illustrated Monthly magazine,
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated New York Newspaper and Harper’s Weekly commonly had
such illustrations, and would be the best place for us to start.
This flask is one of four football related flasks in our
collection, and the second made by Tiffany (see post dated September 28, 2014).
Also see posts dated November 6, 2022 (Walter Camp's personal flask) and June 15, 2015 (association football flask).
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