Museum accessions.

A staunch loyalist, States Dyckman entered the British service with the quartermaster's department in British held New York City during the American Revolution. He was sent to London on official business in 1779, returned to New York in 1781, and then returned again to London, where he remained for most of the rest of the decade. He eventually made his way back to New York, having acquired large tracts of land in Montrose, in the lower Hudson River valley, where he intended to build an English style country house, complete with the finest furnishings and library. Among the objects he acquired was a pair of globes purchased in September 1787 From George Adams, mathematical instrument maker to the king in London.

The ewer and basin shown below have recently been acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana. Their maker, Antonio Cortelazzo, would have thrived in the Renaissance making exactly the sort of complex metal objects that he created about 1870. The nineteenth-century enthusiasm for revivals of past styles produced craftsmen who used the old techniques as skillfully as their forebears. Indeed, early in his career Cortelazzo specialized making "Renaissance" objects for Italian antiques dealers who apparently had no difficulty selling them as the real thing.

Money troubles forced him to sell the entire library which was purchased, somewhat ironically, by Robert Livingston, who had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In a letter to his brother, Livingston wrote, "[Dyckman] has also a handsome pair of globes...perhaps you might get him to throw them in." He presumably did so, for there are no ...