posted 02-10-2011 08:51 AM            

Please post photos of the spoon and the spoon's marks. It will help members to begin to think about your inquiry.

Also I am sure members would like to know more about your collection of silver. When you have the time please consider starting a new post about the silver in your collection.

posted 02-10-2011 09:45 AM            

Crescent City Silver: An Exhibition of Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Silver by Mackie and Parrot is a good book on New Orleans silversmiths and is available on Amazon or at the Historic New Orleans Collection on Royal Street.

You can also go to the “American Silver before Sterling” section of this website and use the search function to find some interesting posts concerning New Orleans silversmiths and other southern silversmiths.

Visits to antiques shops in your area that sell silver should also be a way to meet dealers that are familiar with New Orleans silver and they are always eager to share their knowledge.

Also a “saved search” in the coin silver section of eBay will show interesting pieces from time to time.

posted 02-10-2011 05:19 PM            

I neglected to provide any information about Joseph Rafel and of course that was one of your questions.

posted 02-10-2011 08:35 PM            

quote:

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Jospeh Rafel (1814-aft. 1880), working New Orleans 1850-1866

Joseph Rafel was born in Bonn, Germany on January 28, 1814. The circumstances of his arrival in the United States are not known, but he married in New York, on September 10, 1848, to Sarah Ruden, daughter of Moses A. Ruden and Rebecca S. Gomperts, both Sephardic Jews from Suriname. Rafel's marriage strongly suggests that he, too, was of Jewish descent. He had established himself in New Orleans by 1850, where he appears in the 1850 census with his wife, child, and mother- and sister-in-law. He is listed in the 1851 New Orleans Directory with a loan office under the St. Charles Hotel; a newspaper report of the following year records its destruction by fire. The contents included jewelry, guns and musical instruments, indicating that Rafel was also working as a dealer in fancy goods. He is next listed in the 1861 city directory as a jeweler at 56 Camp Street, the same address as is listed on a surviving invoice of 1862 (to the notorious Benjamin Butler!) and a New Orleans Daily Delta advertisement of 1866. Rafel left New Orleans - and the fancy goods trade - by 1870, when he appears back in New York City working as a stockbroker. The date of his death has not yet been discovered, but it was sometime after 1880 and before 1900, when his widow, Sarah, appears as a head of household in the New York census; she died on August 21, 1913.

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I should also mention that Crescent City Silver was recently reprinted (though not, alas, updated) and so copies should be readily available as ahwt notes.