By the time Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner came on the scene, America had already long practiced the tradition of the gift of silver objects by groups of private citizens to heroes or important persons of the day. In the decorative arts departments of our museums, many of the outstanding works in silver were specially commissioned as trophies or gifts — to the admiral who won the battle, or to the chairman upon his retirement. Though bowls or vases or urns, they were works of unfettered artistry, constrained only by the disciplines of classical taste. In 1800 a merchants’ group commissioned a splendid vase for Thomas Truxtun, the United States Navy captain who commanded the Constellation in its victory over the frigate L’Insurgente in our young nation’s effort to end French disruption of West Indian trade. The Truxtun vase was made in London at a time when Britain and France produced much more elaborate silverwork than did America. Indeed, by the time of the War of 1812, European presentation silver, whether English Regency or Napoleonic French work, had reached a level of lavish display and exacting craftsmanship that put the young republic on call: If we were to assert ourselves to open the sea-lanes against the French, or to fight the British fleet, then, by God, we had also to assert our artistry in the silver-work that commemorated our successful skirmishes. In the early 19th century, at the end of the rainbow lay not a pot of gold, but a silver urn.

Enter Fletcher and Gardiner of Philadelphia, whose presentation silver was the finest yet produced in America, and worthy to stand with the best in the world. Yes, if we could inflict damage upon the British fleet, if we could build the Erie Canal, we could also worthily commemorate these great events in silver works that would awe generations to come. And many of these silver works do nothing less than awe in “Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, 1808–1842,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s splendid survey of the artists’ work in the context of its creative times. In three beautifully arranged rooms, “Silversmiths” is, quite simply, as fine an exhibition of its kind as I’ve ever seen. And it can profitably be viewed alongside other shows in town right now, such as the Lafayette exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, and the Met’s own superb reinstallation of its Wrightsman Rooms of French decorative arts.

Fletcher and Gardiner began their firm in Boston in 1808 and three years later moved to Philadelphia, where a committee soon formed to honor Isaac Hull, commander of the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”), which had scored a decisive victory over the British frigate Guerrière. Completed in 1813, the Hull urn features finely rendered angels, ships, rams’ heads, an eagle, and a Neptune mask. The craftsmanship is first-rate, while stylistically Fletcher’s and Gardiner’s silverwork shared a continuum with European work of the same or a slightly earlier era, as is evident later on when we see some excellent examples of European work and a page from Percier and Fontaine’s breathtaking book “Recueil de Décorations Intérieures,” which had a direct influence on the Hull piece. The Met exhibition excels at contextualizing the silver pieces by setting them beside works by other artists in other media. The Hull urn, for example, is enhanced by Gilbert Stuart’s fine portrait of Hull. Several of the Fletcher and Gardiner pieces are displayed on outstanding works of period furniture, reminding us of the mastery of Philadelphia and New York furniture makers in the early 19th century.

The show points out how our neoclassicism differed from that of the British and French, if not in the most overt stylistic variance, then in a kind of light-handedness, or what we may call, at the risk of cliché, republican simplicity. Even at their most elaborate, Fletcher’s and Gardiner’s works never have the imperial stiffness of, for example, Digby Scott’s and Benjamin Smith’s vase for Thomas Lavie (1805-06). The European silver has the cool quality of some paintings by David, which is a very different mood from the Jacksonian jauntiness of the American decorative arts of the period. That jauntiness is on display even in the most elaborate of Fletcher’s and Gardiner’s pieces in the show, the Erie Canal vases commissioned in 1824 by the “merchants of Pearl Street” to honor DeWitt Clinton. If the young nation had shown its mettle by sinking a few French and British frigates and by engaging in the Tripolitan War, nothing quite prepared the world for the Erie Canal, a larger public-works project than had ever been undertaken in Europe — and one achieved with nary a dime from the national government. On the Clinton vases we see scenes of the canal — the entrance at Albany, the aqueduct at Rochester, Cohoes Falls, and the Little Falls of the Mohawk — alternating with classical gods — Mercury, Ceres, Hercules, Minerva — and allegories of Fame, History, and Plenty. The grape-stalk handles and the basic form come from Piranesi’s Warwick vase, of which there is a brilliant etching on display. Everything about these vases — the craftsmanship, the all-American imagery, the classical references — speaks of our flowering of national character. That is also a theme of the New-York Historical Society’s Lafayette show, so it is well to note that one room used for the Met’s show is the one containing John Vanderlyn’s Versailles panorama, which Lafayette saw in 1824, the very year of the commissioning of the Clinton vases. It is a rich historical tapestry.

When all is said and done, however, some of Fletcher’s and Gardiner’s more mundane or smaller-scale works moved this viewer as much as the Clinton vases. For sheer aesthetics, the miniature portrait of Francis Kinloch Huger, made in Charleston in 1825 as a gift to none other than Lafayette, has an exquisite frame by Fletcher and Gardiner, superbly crafted in the most delicate and intricate floral forms in a symphony of yellow, rose, and green gold — tiny and absolutely breathtaking. Just so, the firm’s bread and butter consisted in its manufacture of the implements of everyday life, and the countless vegetable dishes, soup tureens, table forks, tea sets, sauceboats, pitchers, tankards, and even a baptismal basin all, if not so monumental as the presentation pieces, nonetheless possess a refinement that, as much as any of our works in the arts and crafts, speaks of the rapid maturing of American culture in this most vital period of our coalescing national identity.

Until May 4 (1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710).