posted 09-13-1999 12:02 PM            

In the curatorial viewpoint, it seems to me that many "modest" objects work well when shown alongside "important" ones, because they demonstrate how different consumers satisfied their desire to own silver.

Do you care enough to read on? For example: you have a hand-made Georg Jensen compote from 1922 (that we were given new); a stamped-out "comport" from the Unger Brothers catalogue of 1905; and a Gorahm compote that is somewhere in between--plenty of hand work, yet not without machine assistance. While they all represent the same domestic impulse to decorate a table with a formal silver stand for fruit or some kind of sweet, each also tells a different tale in terms of what the buyer wanted out of his/her silver. Jensen silver has always had the glamour of being hand-crafted--something which only began to really be widely meaningful in the early 20th-century after years of influence from the arts and crafts movement (here and abroad). The Gorham piece, kind of puffy rococo with slight art nouveau overtones, was relying on the standard lure of "old world" opulence and the inherent status that Gorham's name carried. Unger, however, seems to have tapped into a simpler hunger--aimed at a consumer for whom silver was silver, and niceties such as cutting edge design or extensive handcraft were unimportant. The fact that it was made out of silver was key; the fact that it was moderately elaborate was also important; the fact that it was stamped out like a hubcap never entered into the picture, since consumers never had any sense of how mass-market silver was produced.

posted 09-14-1999 12:11 PM            

It is interesting to consider the different markets for silver and most interesting to see samples side by side. It not only brings context to the pieces, but it hopefully helps folks realize that just because silver is precious metal you don't have to be Bill Gates to start appreciating and collecting and using it.

I get misty eyed sometimes when I read marketing ephemera from the the first half of the century goading brides-to-be to choose their silver patterns and study the fine art of table setting and entertaining.