posted 02-06-2014 03:25 PM            

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The Art of the Silversmith
By Claire M. Coburn

The art of the silversmith is as old as the book of Exodus. Yet among the brotherhood of crafts workers in this country, who have been steadily gaining in numbers and recognition during the past ten years, there are but few silversmiths who are more than amateurs. The fact is only partially explained by the invention of machinery and the subdivision of labor, which have influenced all the industrial arts. The craftsman who seriously desires to become a silversmith faces the figurative lion in the way. Opportunities for learning the craft in all its branches in this country are rare. The expense of equipping a shop for a single person is heavy, the material is expensive, and many of the tools cannot be bought, but must be specially made according to individual models. In order to do worthy work, even to compete with the factory product, years of manual labor are indispensable, to say nothing of the knowledge of design, which is necessary to lift the silversmith from the plane of artisan to that of artist - and unless the silversmith is that he is no true craftsman. Little wonder is there for the few master workers in silver!

To fall under the spell of exquisitely wrought utensils of silver, one need not, perforce, be a crafts worker, a collector of old plate or a young housewife alert for the adornment of her table. The thralldom is inherited. Kings and queens have gloried in their plate for thousands of years and much of the wealth of the church in the middle ages took the form of ecclesiastical vessels of gold and silver. The spell is often a strange blend of worship of the god Mammon and a genuine love of the beautiful. Even the saintly grandmother who presents her grandchild on her wedding day with a few thin old silver spoons made by a colonial silversmith, is quite likely to take as much pride in the value of the gift as in its associations and quaint workmanship. The craftsman also feels this potent charm of the precious metal, not because of its costliness, but because of its natural beauty and adaptability for making objects of surpassing splendor. Like the pigments of the painter, silver is his medium for expression.

The loveliness of the best factory made silver, like good wine. "needs no bush." The shop windows of world-famous silversmiths of our large cities dazzle the beholder almost hypnotically with their spotlessly radiant silverware, often graceful in form and attractive in design. The craftsman and the commercial silversmith each must make a livelihood, but they approach their work from different standpoints, and, of necessity, the conditions under which they labor are very unlike. A glimpse of a craftsman in his shop throws new light on the demands of this form of metal work, its dignity and processes. Such a shop is easily an object of interest because of its rarity.

Even more distinctly unique are two shops managed on a co-operative basis by members of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts. In general equipment, these shops are not unlike that of the separate craftsman, so that a visit into one of them will show practically the same methods, for the worker in each of these shops (in actual achievement) is quite independent of his fellows. The moral and financial encouragement of the arts and crafts societies of the United States have greatly aided the development of many crafts, and this is notably true of the influence of the Boston society in connection with silversmithing.

At the lower end of Chestnut street, Boston, in a neighborhood richer in associations than in present attraction, the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts has equipped a silver-working shop, where a few silversmiths have quietly worked for a couple of years. Up one flight back, is a large room, airy and well lighted by a top light and several windows. There is nothing dilettante or suggestive of the decorative studio in the barn-like room, which is emphatically the workshop of artisans. Whatever there is of art goes into the completed object and has no place in the surroundings. Before the windows at one end of the shop is a row of benches, each equipped with an array of hammers an tools which appear to an observing layman more like a machinist's equipment than an artist's kit. Spread out on one bench is a flat piece of silver “stock," as the silversmith calls it, on which a series of circles and dimensions have been drawn. At another bench, a young woman is skillfully twisting and pinching a lot of silver wire into a chain, which grows with wonderful deftness under trained fingers At a third bench, the occupant is hammering a silver bowl over an anvil and the whole room quivers with the rapid vibrations of hammer blows. The wandering glance rests on many new sights, the revolving charcoal pan and blow pipes, used in annealing and soldering, the large electric motor connected with the finishing lathes, the enameler's furnace, the rows of anvils and stakes, plaster casts of hammer and bowls, the shelves of enamel in glass jars. All these minute details, merged at first in a general impression, slowly differentiate themselves and quicken the interest as to their use in connection with a completed chalice that is awaiting a final bath of sulphuric acid and water. The valuable equipment of the shop, exclusive of personal tools, was financed by the Boston society, but each worker shares the running expenses proportionately.

Another shop, somewhat similar in spirit but older and larger in its appointments, is the handicraft shop at Wellesley Hills. Its name might suggest a gift shop, but it is a veritable workroom of silversmiths. The seven craftsmen work as individuals in the execution of their own models, though many of the designs are made by Miss Mary C. Knight, one of their number. The flourishing development of this shop, from a very small beginning five years ago, is most gratifying to those who follow the progress of handicraft. In its earliest days, two or three silversmiths were financially backed by several people connected with the Boston society, who believed in the possibilities of craftsman-like and artistic output of such a shop. A board of directors made up of craftsmen and financiers regulated its business. The original plan has been somewhat modified. There is still a board of directors, but the workers are quite independent and the usual routine affairs are conducted by a shop committee made up of workers. They all have the privilege of drawing from the shop capital a regular weekly amount in lieu of wages, as well as necessary material. These forwarded amounts are repaid at the end of the month from the receipts for articles sold.

Although the craftsmen in these two shops are not equally skillful in designing and executing a piece of silver, they combine an unusual knowledge of processes and come much nearer being all-round si1versmiths than most factory workers, who seldom know more than one branch of work, for example, soldering.

All the enameled silver in the accompanying cuts was made at the arts and crafts shop of Miss Jane Carson and Miss Mildred Watkins of Cleveland, Ohio, another shop as individual in a way as the two just mentioned. The traditional enameler, dating hack as far as the Egyptian cloisonne worker of the eighteenth dynasty, has been masculine. A number of American women combine enameling with metal work in small home studios but Miss Carson's shop is the enterprise of a most progressive young woman. It is located in a fashionable quarter of the city, businesslike in its management and lacking in none of the most modern equipment. Though silversmithing and other metal work and the setting of stones occupy the workers who assist, very little goes out of the workroom which is unornamented with enamel.

Peculiarly pleasing is the dainty child's set of mug, spoon and porringer which was made at this shop (Figure 2) ; the jolly little white rabbit with red eyes and the clover blossoms on the rim, suggest so happily the age and tastes of the youthful owner. Some of the simpler tableware of silver lightly chased may be more utilitarian and substantial than this enameled silver, but it is not as novel. The compote set with Mexican opals (Figure 1), was exhibited at the St Louis exposition.

One of the few master silversmiths in America (the quality of whose work is merely hinted at in Figure 6) is Mr. Arthur J. Stone of Gardner. After years of apprenticeship and training in large English and Scotch shops, and in connection with important factories in this country, he finally came to this quiet town. Here he set up a little shop of his own where he might linger lovingly over the shaping and embellishing of a piece of silver. The steady growth in the imaginative feeling of his designs in repousse work may be traced to the influence of his congenial surroundings. An account of his early training in an English silversmith's shop has a fascinating foreign favor for the American reader. When he was only fourteen years of age. the master, the boy's mother and the lad himself signed a contract for the disposal of his services. During that period his tasks were many and diversified, and even included "washing the tea" which was served every afternoon in the shop, in accordance with English custom. But this apprenticeship was like a foundation of rock for later progress.

To give any idea of the process of silversmithing, a whole text-book would be inadequate, but a hint of the actual method by which a craftsman makes a bowl similar to the porringers shown here is suggestive, at least. The "raising from the flat" of any utensil requires infinite patience and great mechanical skill before any kind of artistic ornamentation can be applied. The material used is sheets of silver "stock" prepared by reliable firms. Unmixed with some baser metal, silver is too soft to be durable, so that it must be combined with some alloy. For five hundred years the proportions have remained unchanged and the sterling stamp to be looked for on all silver is 925 parts silver to every 1000 parts.

A working drawing for a bowl (for example) initiates the process. To quote from a very accurate account by the wife of a silversmith (The Silversmith's Tools, by Elizabeth B. Stone), "The silver is cut from the flat stock, with a pair of heavy cutting shears, the base marked from the center out and the edges uniformly crimped, suggesting the scalloped tin in the kitchen. Geometrical accuracy is imperative. Beginning just outside the base, it is hammered round and round over the anvil, until the silver becomes too hard to answer to the blow. This process lifts it from the flat, and gradually straightens the crimped edge." The shaping of a bowl after the metal is "raised" means a series of other skillful blows, for the wise silversmith knows that he cannot force the metal but must nurse it into shape. For forms more complex than a bowl, the training of a mounter is called into play. He must "assemble" the different parts which have been hammered or beaten and solder them together, a nice process requiring great accuracy.

The ornamentation of silver, either in repousse or line engraving, is almost another craft by itself and like the "finishing" in bookbinding, tests the worker's knowledge of design. The final mechanical processes are accomplished by the finishing lathe, with its buffs and brushes.

In some of the largest silversmiths' factories in this country, highly trained workers are employed to make by hand new designs for choice tea sets and every other form of plate. Occasionally these same artisans fill special orders for patrons who demand hand work. But as a rule, after the new designs have been modified if necessary, every other set except the first is stamped from steel dies or "spun," as the process is called by which a piece of silver is shaped over a wooden model in a lathe. An indefinite number of replicas come from the same die of course, by this
method.

Better than the freshness of the pattern which makes these few examples of craftsman silver attractive, is the knowledge that the same intelligence which planned the design in nearly every case, followed the piece of work to its completion, according to the quality of the metal, respecting its limitations and modifying the pattern in accordance therewith. The hammer marks which often are vaguely present but help to reveal the texture of the metal. The practical requirements of durability and utility are adequately met by hand wrought silver. Its finish lacks the high polish on which the first finger print is a blemish. Instead it is slightly dulled so that it does not lose luster from daily use, but rather gains in beauty of surface from its handling, so that each succeeding generation to which it comes, finds the well-made example of the true silversmith increasingly beautiful.

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