Good 19th-Century Detroit Coin (.900) Silver Urn, dated 1857, by George Doty (1815-1906), Detroit, Michigan, the ovoid body decorated with repousse strawberries, with arched handles and figural finial en suite, above an ogee domed foot, with milled leaf-and-cabochon banding throughout, engraved with a presentation inscription "S.T. Douglass / Justice Sup. Ct. Mich. / from the / Bar of Detroit / 1857" opposing the Horation quotation "Vilius Argentum est Auro, Virtutibus Aurum" ["Silver is of less value than gold, gold than virtue" Epist. I.I.52], h.10-1/2", w. 7-1/4", dia. 5-1/4", 24.49 t. oz. George Doty was born in Canadiagua, New York, but moved with his family to Mount Clemens, Michigan by 1822, eventually settling in Detroit in 1826. He returned to New York to learn the jeweler's and watchmaker's trade in Buffalo, working briefly in Albany before returning to Detroit in 1836. After a brief partnership with Edmund Kearsley, he opened his own shop in 1838, where he employed a small number of silversmiths. Business reversals occasioned by the Civil War forced him to close his workshop in 1863. Again after a brief partnership (this time with his father-in-law Daniel W. King) 1866-1867, he once again opened his own shop which he ran until his retirement to Breckenridge, Colorado in 1874. He returned to Detroit shortly before his death on August 31, 1905. The recipient of this handsome urn was the Hon. Samuel Townsend Douglass (1814-1898), who served as a Judge of the Wayne Circuit, and therefore as justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, from January 1852 until May 1857, when the state Circuit Courts were split from the Supreme Court. Douglass, a Democrat, was nominated by his party for a seat on the bench, but the appointment was given by the overwhelmingly Republican state legislature to his opponent, James V. Campbell (who was coincidentally his brother-in-law and former law partner). This cup was doubtless presented to Douglass upon his 1857 retirement from the bench and return to private practice.