Silver in America, 1840-1940

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1994 by Charles L. Venable

In 1892, after visiting the factory of the New York City silver firm of Dominick and Haff, a writer for the Jeweler's Circular stated:

Silversmithing has become a craft of industry, retaining many of the traditions and essentials of pure art in whose realms it formerly resided. The student of industrial progress visiting the modern silversmith's factory will find much food for meditation. Before his mind's eye rises involuntarily an image of the shop in which the ancient solitary silversmith hammered the metal, and, manipulating it with a few simple tools, produced a work of art. Here in the modern factory be sees hundreds of men, divided into bodies each of whom performs an individual operation; the whirring of the shafting, the bussing of hundreds of wheels, the twanging of hammers, produces a conglomeration of noise which drowns the voice. The results of this animation is the production of articles, beautiful in form, exquisite in decoration, and artistic in treatment.(1)

The first critical impetus for the transformation of the silverware industry in the United States was the tariff of 1842, which effectively halted the importation of silverware. With a secure market for their products, entrepreneurs such as John Gorham increased the use of machines and the division of labor in the production of silverware. Immigrant European master craftsmen such as John R. Wendt (1826-1907) from Germany trained American apprentices, who in turn dominated the industry. By the 1870's the largest silver-making concerns employed hundreds of skilled workers and were located in southern New England and the New York City region. The industry was led by Tiffany and Company, J. R. Wendt and Company, Whiting Manufacturing Company, and Wood and Hughes, all in New York City; Gorham Manufacturing Company in Providence, Rhode Island; Meriden Britannia Company in Meriden, Connecticut; and Reed and Barton in Taunton, Massachusetts.

In the 1860's both foreign-born and American designers moved away from the European-inspired Gothic and rococo revivals towards more original juxtapositions of classical decoration with spare, modern shapes. Of primary importance is the work of the Englishman George Wilkinson, who was hired by Gorham in 1857. His powerful designs, unlike any in Europe, were both popular and influential and often anticipated the work of his more famous countryman Christopher Dresser. In 1860 Wilkinson worked with John Wendt designing and making silver for Ball, Black and Company, a retail store in New York City, and it is likely that the young designers in Wendt's shop absorbed Wilkinson's style, which they perpetuated throughout the 1860's and 1870's. The tea and coffee set shown in Plate VI shows a great affinity with Wilkinson's work, although it was made after he returned to Gorham in 1860. It is possible that Wilkinson produced a number of models for Wendt that were made up later as needed. Eventually copies and adaptations of Wilkinson's designs became so numerous that Gorham had to warn customers against poor quality reproductions made both here and abroad.

In the vibrant economy stimulated by the Civil War, Americans came to view silver as a necessity, and many of the wealthiest rivaled, if not surpassed, their European counterparts in their holdings of silverware during the 1870's. Henry Jewett Furber, the president of the Universal Life Insurance Company of New York City and Chicago, and his wife, Elvira Irwine Furber, commissioned Gorham to make a dinner service of at least 740 pieces between 1871 and 1879.(2) Late in the decade Marie Louise and John W. Mackay ordered a dinner service of about 1,250 pieces from Tiffany and Company, supplying their own silver from the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, which had made the Mackays millionaires.(3)

One reason why these services were so large was because they contained many pieces of specialized flatware. By 1850 both English and American firms were making such forms as fish sets, lobster crackers and scoops, tart servers, nutpicks, ice hammers, sardine tongs, and bread forks.(4) Between 1850 and 1915, however, American makers overtook their European counterparts by devising cheese, macaroni, tomato, and cucumber servers; pudding, berry, oyster, olive, orange, grapefruit, ice, ice-cream, and iced-tea spoons; cake, ice-cream, and jelly knives; pickle, terrapin, lettuce, lemon, mango, and lobster forks; and picks for butter and seafood. By the late nineteenth century, many American flatware manufacturers maintained patterns containing more than one hundred different forms.

The great range of American flatware fascinated Europeans. In 1886 a commentator wrote in the London Magazine of Art:

If we go to one of the first London silversmiths and ask for spoons and forks, we are met at once with the smiling query. "Yes, Sir; fiddle or old English?" Fiddle or old English! If we decline both those chaste designs we are assured that there is still a large selection of patterns remaining. The "Lily," the "Beaded," "King's Pattern," and "Queen's Pattern." There perforce, our choice must end....Mark the difference, in this one article, between the supine conservatism of the English manufacturers and the alertness and constant progress of the American maker. For instance [Gorham] would not be satisfied unless it produced every year or two new patterns, nearly all of which are beautiful, and of which they will produce a complete service of all articles for table use from a salt-spoon to a soup ladle.(5)