Large, visibly expensive objects are a quick and convenient way of expressing wealth. Kings in the seventeenth century were surrounded by silver furniture, and while the new American millionaires of the late nineteenth century did not go quite so far, they, too, liked to see the gleam of precious metal livening up their houses. That it adorned their dining room tables goes without saying, but there was also one key piece of silver without which social life in the era was impossible: the punch bowl.

This one, with its figures and silver gilt, is typical of the appropriation of earlier styles that was then so usual. Designed to resemble a sixteenth-century Italian vessel, it was fashioned in the 188Os during the Italianate revival whose red-brick Venetian palazzi with their emphatic cornices still adorn every American city.

The two decades since the Civil War had seen a lot of fortunes made, and the millionaires who were building their palaces on Fifth Avenue were new to manners as well as to wealth; few could boast that their parents had belonged to society. Still, even if you were so raw that there was no hope of ever receiving one of Mrs. Astor’s coveted invitations, you could at least impress those who were slightly less rich than yourself.

As many of the new rich found to their distress, that meant entertaining. The day of showing off wealth in the pages of a decorating magazine had not yet dawned, so to flaunt it, you had to get people in. And that meant you had to buy a punch bowl. Punch was the almost universal drink at parties—the equivalent of today’s white wine—and the punch bowl, with its lad’e and silver cups, was set in the place of honor. In an era when consumption could never be conspicuous enough, it was an ideal pretext to show just how rich you were.

Unfortunately, amid all that splendor—the decor throughout was as lavish as the punch bowl—the parties often were dull, awkward affairs, where the hostess, in her Paris gown and diamond necklace, fidgeted uneasily and the guests felt tongue-tied and embarrassed. The novels of authors like William Dean Howells and even Edith Wharton are eloquent on the subject. Blushing, overdressed young girls, their red-faced, bewhiskered fathers clearly yearning for a spittoon, and their rigidly corseted mothers, all standing in little, often terrified groups, did not make for a lively party, but then, the next day, they could boast of their presence at the night’s event while the hostess had the satisfaction of reading all about it in the papers’ society columns.

Indeed, the new millionaires had no choice. Giving a successful ball was as important to them as belonging to the boards of great cultural institutions has become to