posted 01-23-2017 11:54 AM            

I spent four hours at a silver auction in NYC yesterday, and managed to acquire four important and rare things for Newark's collection - at bargain prices. The reality is: the market is active and busy, but it is not "high" and it is not making any records any more.

Museums indeed are very fussy about what they want - and are loathe to take on whole collections unless they are IMPORTANT (and you figure out what that means to any one museum).

I know that Newark has over 200 NJ spoons in its collection. We have quite a bit of flatware, some of which I've collected purposely to complement and enrich the story that flatware tells. Place pieces are only of interest if they are in particularly important patterns. Most museums don't even want serving pieces unless they are really visually splendid and represent some aesthetic moment in a very specific way.

I think today that Ebay is the only way to go with flatware collections (or something like - there must be other similar venues for small things). It sounds very doomsday of me, but museums are not about research and scholarship, they are about educating audiences and desperately trying to make traditional materials (i.e. anything more than ten years old) relevant to audiences.

Winterthur and Yale have vast (I mean THOUSANDS) flatware study collections and for them this is perfect. They don't need anything more, and I know of no other museum in the USA that wants or maintains decorative arts study (rather than display) collections.

posted 02-11-2017 07:22 PM            

Sad about flatware. No one wants to use sterling flatware much anymore except maybe me and some holdouts in the South. Brides don't even register for a silver pattern anymore, do they? I on the other hand have several drawers groaning under the weight of sterling and plate flatware and I love researching it and using it!

Cheers, Kelly