posted 07-30-2010 11:39 PM            

Franklin Porter (b. 1869) was an important American silversmith who worked in Bristol Ferry, RI and later Middleton, Mass. and finally Danvers, Mass. Educated at the Rhode Island School of Design, he became a machinist for Brown and Sharpe, then General Electric, and the Champion Electric Light Factory. While working for these companies he made silver, nickel silver, brass, and copper objects after hours that he and his wife Ethel sold from their home. Porter was laid off from Champion in 1924 and at the age of 55 became a full-time silversmith.

He and Ethel were caretakers for the Judge Samuel Holton House in Danvers, primarily for the free rent, but also because it had a woodshed behind it that Porter converted into his workshop, where he displayed a Kipling quote: "All we can do is learn how to do our work, to be masters of our materials, instead of servants, and never to be afraid of anything." He named the workshop "Saint Dunstan's" after the patron saint of silversmiths.

His long experience as a machinist helped him make many of his own tools. Extremely frugal, he constructed templates for his pieces out of whatever was at hand -- sheets of aluminum cut from an old car, salad oil cans, and the sides of a used copper bathtub.

He never had any partners, and preferred to work alone or with his daughter Helen Louise Porter Philbrick (and for a brief period with an adopted son Edward). Porter's work is generally signed "F. Porter" or a conjoined adorsed FP (with the F backwards so it and P share the same spine). Work done with or by Helen was signed HLP starting in 1928, and PHILBRICK beginning in 1936 after she married. In 1969 Helen wrote a touching and fact-filled biography of her father for the Essex Institute that is the basis of most of the information presented here; the rest is from a Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin study on Franklin and Helen by Graham Boettcher, The William C. Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

posted 07-30-2010 11:41 PM            

In 1926 the city of Salem, Mass. needed a souvenir pin for its 300th anniversary, and asked Porter to make a small silver brooch in the stylized form of the Leander, a historic Salem ship. Porter made 150 Leander pins, and sold each for $1.50 from a vacant storefront turned into a temporary silversmith's shop for the tercentenary festival. The pins sold out within the week, and over the next 5-6 years he and his daughter made about a thousand more.

According to Helen, they were unable to keep up with the demand. The pins were all made by hand, a time-consuming and labor-intensive effort:

"Every one had seventeen holes pierced, to silhouette the shape of the wind-filled sails. Each hole was first stamped with a prick punch, then drilled with the finest drill. The outline was sawed with a jeweler's saw, about the thickness of a hair, held taught in a saw frame. To saw out the holes, the jeweler's saw had to be released and threaded into each hole, tightened, sawed out, released again and rethreaded into the next hole.... The rounded sails were shaped first from the back with dapping tools, driven into a lead block. Then each pin was held over a tiny anvil while the sails were shaped with a very small hammer. After that, all we had to do was to paint each one with thick yellow ochre, solder on the pin fittings, clean off the ochre and the scale from soldering, pickle, polish, add the pin tongue and sometimes a fitting in the safety catch, polish again, box and deliver to customers."

Sales of the pins were brisk and according to Helen, "helped keep the wolf from our door." But customers clamored for more, and for variations:

"People asked for the same pin in a smaller size, for a tiny Leander pin, for stick pins with Leanders and even for earrings, still with seventeen holes, but less than half the size of the original. We made buttons with Leanders soldered on, and matchboxes of copper with silver Leanders floating over them."

To satisfy these requests, Porter decided to have the "hack work" (Helen's words) done elsewhere, and commissioned 2,000 die-stamped versions. These were somewhat smaller and far cruder than the originals, and didn't sell as well.

Helen's take: "This was indeed a lesson to our workshop: if you make handmade articles, keep them handmade and don't compromise."

Late in life Porter was popular as a lecturer, giving demonstrations of his craft. He began these with a favorite Chaucer line: "the Lyf so short, the Crafte so long to lerne."

posted 07-31-2010 04:31 PM            

Franklin Porter was born in Providence, Rhode Island on 9 May 1869.His wife Ethel Louise B Chase was also born in Providence and on 6 February 1872. Ethel's paternal grandmother was a Borden which may account for the "B" amongst her middle names.

posted 12-22-2011 01:10 PM            

Here's an unsigned Leander matchbox, the first we've seen:

posted 03-16-2009 02:22 AM            

As I am a new member, I cannot respond to those threads directly.

I recently published an article in the Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin on Porter and his daughter/apprentice Helen Porter Philbrick. For a pdf of the entire article, go to the following link:

A Family Tradition:
The Silverwork of Franklin Porter and Helen Porter Philbrick