Undated (circa 1800?) Washington Portrait Shell. Musante GW-Unlisted; Baker-Unlisted. Iron. AU-55. 21.8 x 16.6 mm. Deep slate surfaces are slightly pebbled in texture, perhaps as made. Two examples of this Berlin Iron casting are featured in a March 2009 <em>Collectors Weekly </em>article by Stephan Decatur. Therein, Decatur identifies these as being of German manufacture, circa 1800. Two provenances are given, one to a General Daniel Keim of Reading, PA, and the other "probably belonged originally to Mrs. Tobias Lear [wife of Washingtons personal secretary]." These were used in mourning jewelry. A similar one was plated in the 1914 sale of the George Parsons Collection. That provenance was assigned to this piece in the May 2004 Ford sale, but this is clearly a different piece. Henry Chapman wrote that the Parsons piece had a "J" on the reverse, which this does not have, and the border spacing is different between the two. From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier ex the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection; our (Stack’s) sale of the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection, Part II, May 2004, lot 242.
