A Conversation with a Silver Expert: Joseph P. Brady
Pair of Candlesticks, 1757-58
Edward Wakelin (British, active before 1748, died 1784)
Silver
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
About the Expert
Joseph P. Brady, AAA is a silver historian and professional appraiser with over thirty years of experience. In addition to writing the chapter on American and English silver for Appraising Art: The Definitive Guide to Appraising the Fine and Decorative Arts (2013), he is a frequent lecturer and author. Courtney Ahlstrom Christy spoke with Mr. Brady about his path to becoming a metalwork expert as well as discussing current collecting for antique and modern silver.
A Word on Images
Please note that the images of antique silver included in this article are in the public domain and sourced from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They serve as illustrative examples of silver history.
The Conversation
Courtney Ahlstrom Christy (CAC): Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I understand that your mother owned an antiques business. Is that true?
Joseph P. Brady (JB): Yes, she owned the business in Florida. We’re from Savannah originally but my father was a builder so we moved to Florida very early on. I was the youngest of four and when I was in high school, she started the antiques business.
We traveled back to Savannah every summer and St. Patrick’s Day. So, we would do most of the buying then and bring things back to Miami. Instead of running a shop, she did the major antiques shows - Miami Beach Show, Coconut Grove Cares Show, Palm Beach Winter Show. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about decorative arts in general. But the silver bug hit me very early on.
CAC: Do you have any childhood memories of encountering silver articles? At home or working with your Mom?
Sugar Bowl, circa 1795
Paul Revere Jr. (American, 1734–1818)
Silver
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
JB: Probably my first big silver memory as a child was getting in trouble for digging in the yard with a silver tablespoon. But I grew up around it and knew what silver was. Being in the antiques business as a teenager made me realize that there’s more to it than sitting down and eating with it or lighting candelabra. Really studying it was important. I was supposed to go to Stetson University Law School, but during a summer job I met a personal property appraiser, and my career path changed. I haven’t regretted that. I work with a lot of divorce attorneys, and all of them say I made the right choice.
CAC: How did metalwork become your chosen area of specialty? Was there something about silver in particular that drew you in?
JB: I actually first became a gemologist and did achieve the title of registered jeweler from the American Gem Society. But I really didn’t like jewelry in general as much as the larger, more interesting silver objects. Don’t get me wrong, there are also some wonderful older jewelry pieces that are fabulous, like Tiffany, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. But quite often, jewelry is just a symbol of money. If it ever becomes fashionable to wear cash, a lot of jewelry stores will go out of business.
I actually had that explained to me one time by my mentor, the personal property appraiser I met during that summer job. We were looking at a piece of jewelry and there was a big diamond in the middle of this pendant. I commented on the diamond and he said, “Oh that’s just a symbol of money. Look at what’s around it.” And it was the Art Deco-style setting that was so special. Not the two-carat gemstone that was in the middle of it.
I’ll never forget I had this one customer at the jewelry store. He wanted to buy an engagement ring, and we worked and worked for a couple of hours. He had a budget, knew what he wanted to spend. We came up with the right stone as for as the size, balancing color and clarity with the cut that he wanted. And we found with something that was just right for his budget. He was giving it that night. The very next morning his fiancé marched him into the store to open a credit account and buy a much bigger diamond.
CAC: It sounds like you have a long history with the world of appraising. With your decades of experience, can you discern the difference between sterling and silverplate by sight or touch even before you truly analyze? I know there’s an innate instinct one can hone over the years.
You know, I can. It’s not just looking at solid silver versus silverplate. I have gotten to the point where I can recognize the country of origin and the timeframe from across the room. And it’s just something I can’t explain. I remember I was with a new assistant who was eager to learn everything, and I pointed to a tea set that was across the room. I said, “That’s Chinese export.” And it turned out when we examined it to be Chinese export.
Soup Tureen, circa 1865
Chinese, for American market
Silver
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Chinese makers were sending things mostly to England and some to the American colonies as well. They were imitating the popular English styles. But they didn’t get it quite right. I can look at something and see that it is an English form but not exactly. You know the Chinese export construction is completely different. For example, when you’re looking at an American colonial fork in fiddle and shell pattern, the shell is hammered in relief. With the Chinese piece, the shell is cast separately and soldered on. I have seen a lot of these where the construction is just completely different from an English or American piece at the same time. But even before looking at the construction, I can tell from the overall form its country of origin.
Another time I had a client who said they had a Paul Revere teapot that descended in the family. So, I get to the house and look at it from across the room and think, “that could be an actual Paul Revere period teapot.” It turned out it wasn’t Paul Revere, but it was made by a Paul Revere contemporary.
You know, Paul Revere was not the most talented silversmith at this time. He is famous because of the poem that was written by Longfellow. That’s the whole reason Paul Revere Silver is even noticed on the market. He was an adequate silversmith at best. But he became famous as a patriot even though that wasn’t even a big part of his life. He was more of a businessman.
But I looked at this teapot and could tell from first impression that it was made in the 1760s. Turned out it had been made by John Bailey of Philadelphia, who was working at the same time Revere was working in Boston. It looked very similar to what Paul Revere was producing.
CAC: Have you noticed any regional differences when it comes to families valuing silver today or even in previous centuries?
JB: In the 19th century and the 20th century in the South, silver became in many ways your bank account. And even today, although I have clients from coast to coast, most of my work is in the Southeast.
CAC: I notice in the South that many families have an assembled service of flatware.
JB: Oh yes, and it’s usually Chantilly by Gorham. The most popular pattern in the country. In fact, it’s so popular that it was written in Herald Newman’s book, an English illustrated dictionary of silver. It was the only American flatware pattern that was mentioned.
CAC: Have you observed a change in the way silver is collected today?
JB: Americans’ attitude toward things have changed a good bit. There are young collectors fortunately coming along.
And a good thing for them is that the bottom sort of fell out of the American colonial market starting about ten years ago as these billionaire collectors were aging out of the markets. Some of their collections came up for sale at auction. There was one major collector on the east coast who died a few years ago, and it was consigned to Sotheby’s. January is their big American silver sale and it took them two years to go through her entire collection through January auctions. And I know that a little posset cup that she paid $90,000 fifteen or twenty years earlier realized less than $20,000 at this auction.
So, what is happening fortunately for younger collectors is that this material becoming more available and relatively affordable. It’s more of a millionaire’s market than a billionaire’s market when it comes to American colonial silver.
Teapot, circa 1880
Tiffany & Co. (America, 1837–present)
Silver, copper, ivory, and jade
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
An area that’s also really growing in silver is the Japanesque taste from mid to late 19th century. Mixed metals are also a growth area right now.
CAC: Are there any sleepers or growing niche areas of silver collecting?
JB: Well, a sleeper that is kind of going back to sleep now is early to mid 20th century Modernism. What happened was that at the turn of the 21st century, museum curators realized that their permanent collections for the most part ended around 1900-1910, and so there was this surge to buy things in the Modern taste. That market was driven briefly for about ten years by museum curators and individuals too who were adding to their collections to finish the 20th century.
CAC: I’ve heard that because Midcentury Modern has become so popular with widespread reproductions and knock-offs that is now become somewhat passé for upscale collectors who are looking for the next thing.
JB: Well, it depends on the maker. In silver anyway, if it’s really good and by one the important makers, let’s say Georg Jensen, it’s still going to have strong value. But you’re right, something by Gorham, Reed & Barton, or Towle in a modern style is not going to bring a high price today like it would have a few years ago.
CAC: I know that in fine art, there are certain blue-chip artists that may inspire fakes and forgeries. For silver, do you have to worry much about such things?
JB: Oh yes, that happens with antique silver. For example, American colonial chambersticks or candlesticks, are extremely rare. One time, there was supposedly a pair from an important collection that came up for auction. I had personally never seen American chambersticks and was surprised to see them in the catalogue. I went to the New York preview and was told that they had figured out they were let-in marks. Somebody had taken American maker’s marks from a spoon or something like that and burnished those into where the English hallmarks had originally been.
You can sometimes see where the patched-in mark is by the difference in the coloring of the silver, especially if it’s allowed to tarnish or not highly polished.
CAC: Do you come across let-in marks every now and then? Or is it more of a rarity?
JB: It is a rarity. I’ve never seen it in a collection that I have appraised. The bigger problem is electroformed casting. They take an original piece, make a latex mold of it, and fill that mold using an electroplated process except instead of actually plating, they’re making a solid piece. I have seen a number of pieces done that way.
For instance in a private collection recently I saw some extremely rare terrapin forks by Gorham. The bowl of the fork is actually shaped like a little turtle with its shell and all the great details. But these were electroformed cast; one of the giveaways was the maker’s mark was a little bit muddied and so it had been enhanced to look more “authentic.” (See a set of authentic Gorham Terrapin forks sold at Christie’s in January 2018 by following the link here.)
Another time I had a client who bought a pair of Kirk & Son ewers made in the 1840s. They had the typical blossoms, leaves, and vignettes with castles and landscapes, everything you see in this kind of repoussé work. It was a beautiful pair of ewers. But keep in mind repoussé work is hammered out from the inside and then they chaise the pattern on the outside and with engraving tools they finish it off. You end up with this elaborate and rich decoration. When you look inside, you’re going to see the reverse of what you see on the outside. So, where a blossom sticks out on the outside, it’s indented on the inside.
One of the first giveaways for one of the ewers was that the mark was enhanced, but then looking down into it you saw almost a smooth surface inside from that electroform casting. Casting doesn’t do what the original hammered work does. While the original pushes out, this one just fills the mold. The appraisal ended up being two items rather than a pair. Item one: Ewer with maker’s mark of Samuel Kirk & Son, circa 1846. Item number two: Ewer with spurious mark of Samuel Kirk & Son, 20th to 21st century, electroform cast from the piece above.
Baraffael Family Hanukkah Lamp, 1773–75
Gaspare Vanneschi (Italian, active 1758–1787)
Silver, embossed, engraved, punched; soft wood back support
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
CAC: Have you ever tried any metalwork yourself to get the experience?
JB: I have no artistic talent. I’ve watched silversmiths and know what and how they do. I can look at their work and tell you if it’s good or bad. But I cannot do it myself.
CAC: It seems the provenance is becoming more and more important these days for any type of object and particularly when valuing it. Are there any particular stories of provenance that you can share with us?
JB: Yes, provenance is very important especially if there is some historical figure involved. One example was a toddy ladle that had descended in the family. It was a typical form with silver bowl and baleen handle, made about 1760 or so. It would have been worth less than a thousand dollars, but it came with an early 19th-century letter saying this ladle was a gift to your father from General George Washington when he visited during a night of Hanukkah.
I asked for the family tree from the client. The person who supposedly was given this gift by Washington actually was a soldier who served under him at Valley Forge. I did a google search of the soldier’s name and found out that his name appears in a book titled, Jews on the Frontier. So first, go to Amazon and get a copy. I read about the soldier and yes, he served under Washington. Then it goes on to tell this story about Washington being in Philadelphia about a year or so after Valley Forge where he visited the home of this soldier during a night of Hanukkah. Washington had great affection for the Hanukkah story with the Maccabees fighting overwhelming odds. So he already had a soft spot in his heart for Hanukkah, and apparently he later sent this ladle as a gift. It’s not quite the smoking gun but I was able to piece those two stories together. I then found parallel comparables of similar items belonging to Washington, which have a multiple of nearly seventy times of what it’s worth as just an object. So, we came up with the value on the ladle that way.
Early American church silver is another interesting area that can have good provenance. At the end of the 20th century and even into the early 21st century, a lot of churches were deaccessioning their colonial silver for two reasons: (1) they couldn’t afford the insurance and (2) they couldn’t actually use it. Not to mention that these are old churches that need expensive repairs.
The first of these was a church that had been established around the 1690s and was rebuilt in stone in the 1840s (actually mostly funded by John Quincy Adams). Well, a stone building built in the 1840s needs a lot of work in the 1990s. In fact, it needed millions of dollars’ worth of work. They deaccessioned some important pieces of silver including three cups that were believed to be the first three pieces made and marked by Paul Revere Jr., who is the Paul Revere we know as the Patriot. His father was Apollos Rivoire who came from France as a Huguenot refugee and apprenticed as a silversmith under John Coney.
This set of three cups made for a church in Boston was commissioned to Paul Revere Sr. The confusing part about the Paul Reveres is that Junior took over the family practice, and since they had the same initials, he was using the father’s punch for a while. So, you don’t know exactly where one maker ends and the other one starts. Except we know when this particular commission came about and that Senior was on his deathbed, so it had been turned over to his son the apprentice.
Communion Dish, circa 1764
Samuel Minott (1732–1803)
Silver
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The great thing about early American church silver and provenance is the reference book called The Old Silver of American Churches from 1913. An English expert on silver named E. Alfred Jones was commissioned by the Colonial Dames Society to document the old silver in American churches. It’s a huge book. There were 506 copies with page after page of photographs of church silver covering Maine to Virginia. All these pieces are from colonial time to about 1840. So when things are being deaccessioned by one of these old churches, you can see if it was documented. It has been a very important reference for me as far as establishing provenance.
And the interesting thing is that this book is hard to find. I remember when the first time one came up, I bid it up to a thousand dollars and decided not to pay more than that and let it go. Then another one came up after that brought two thousand dollars. So I guessed I’d have to pay more than a thousand dollars. Betty at Joslin Hall in Massachusetts specialized in rare books. One day, she called my office to say she had a copy. Then she apologized saying it was a former library copy so it had a stamp inside. She sold it to me for $775 dollars because it had that stamp in it. It was a year before I even noticed the mark.
So, this book has been valuable to me over my career.
CAC: I imagine it’s an invaluable resource. It sounds like it’s the closest thing you can get to a catalogue raisonné for American church silver of the period. Are there any similar projects being done these days for other silver categories?
JB: Well, about twenty years ago I started collecting stories of Southern church silver. I published one story in Silver Magazine titled “The Communion Silver of Roswell Presbyterian Church.” I talk about the story of silver being hidden during the Civil War. The pastor sent the silver to the poorest member of the church because that was the house that would not be searched by the Yankees. They may have searched for food, but they wouldn’t be thinking of silver being there.
Another story comes from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church here in Atlanta. They have a communion set that was dedicated to them in the 1880s. It’s okay to talk about this story because it was published in the book they sell. I was called to inventory their silver and there were these two communion cups made in New York in the 1880s and a matching paten. The paten is set with a half carat, old mine-cut diamond. And so, I thought there has to be a story here.
I asked the church historian, and he explained that the church was going through financial difficulties and had a Christmas pageant. It was held in a nearby theater, and these are the days of gas jets and gas lamps. Young ladies are running around the stage dressed as angels with big cotton batten wings. One of those wings touched a gas jet, and the woman was burned to death. Her husband donated their wedding silver and her engagement ring to the church. They sent the silver and the ring up to a New York maker where it was made into the communion server. Her name was engraved on the foot of each of the chalice in memory. The following Christmas, the chalices and paten were used for the first time.
CAC: That’s quite a story! I imagine it’s hard to choose, but are there any particular time periods or regions that are personal favorites?
JB: My favorite time period transcends country. My own personal collecting taste is for the Neoclassical period. In France and England, the style begins not too long after the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii. And of course, in North America we were fighting a war so we don’t see it here until after the revolution around the 1790s. It became popular in the United States also because we’re considering ourselves a new republic based on ancient Rome and Greece. So, this Greco-Roman look becomes important.
CAC: I don’t know if you’ve heard this one, but at some point they were suggesting people write their social security number on the bottom of their pieces. I had a client who did that, and his house was robbed at some point with a silver piece stolen that was very personal to him. He was shopping about ten years later and saw an item that looked identical the lost one. He decided to purchase it in memory of what he used to have. He turned over the piece and there was his social security number. What are the chances?
JB: Yes, in the 1980s the price of silver jumped to fifty dollars an ounce. Adjusted for inflation, that is almost $125 dollars today. Because the Hunt brothers were trying to corner the silver market. The price of silver went up and burglaries become rampant. Police gave out these electric engraving pens for people to engrave their social security numbers or some identifying mark. Of course, today people probably would want the social security number more than the silver. There was a rumor, that wasn’t true and couldn’t possibly be true, that these thieves had vans where they melted the silver as they were driving off.
CAC: That would be one magical van.
JB: Exactly, because silver melts at 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. There would have been vans blowing up all over the country if that was true. The other thing is that when silver is stolen, it is likely to be melted but more likely to be resold and resold and end up in a flea market.
Back in the 1980s, I was doing an estate appraisal for three brothers whose parents had been silver collectors. They had some important pieces and some unimportant ones as well. But they had a lot of silver. The collection started because their father was at an antique show and saw somebody buy a silver bon bon dish; the buyer then put it on the floor, stomped to flatten it, and then put it in his pocket. Again that was when the price of silver was high, and people were buying silver to melt. So, the father decided he was going to save as many nice pieces as he could and ended up with this huge collection.
CAC: I hope there are more stewards of material culture like him out there.
Vase, 1900
Tiffany & Co. (1837–present)
Silver, silver-gilt, freshwater baroque pearls, amazonite, opals
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
JB: Now, that’s not the biggest appraisal I’ve ever done. The largest project was a collection of silver devoted to modernism, it’s probably the largest private collection in the country. It took two weeks just to inventory everything. Because it’s an important collection, the owner has pieces on loan to museums. So I ended up going to the Met where the curator opened the case for me to get out the silver. And when you open a case at the Met, a crowd gathers. I’m okay dealing with an audience but you want to politely say this isn’t a public event.
I remember another were two other times I was at the Met. One was the earliest known communion cup. And there was another one I can talk about because it is on view now. It is a silver gilt loving cup from the 1890s that was given to Charles Tiffany and his wife as a fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was made by the factory workers at Tiffany & Co. who all signed a parchment scroll that accompanies the piece. It goes on and on – there’s probably a PhD-worth of information in that scroll.
The loving cup is in mint condition and has its original wood oak presentation case. You can see it in the American wing (view an image online here). The cup is wine cooler in size, but loving cups were really made as presentation pieces. Most loving cups at that time had three handles, harking back to communal drinking of medieval times. If something was being passed, you didn’t have to touch the same handle they were touching, especially someone of lower rank. This Tiffany example has five handles formed as oak branches, a sign of longevity and strength. The decoration is forget-me-nots and ivy vines which also have significance to longevity and love. So, there are five handles and two broken branches. The Tiffany’s had seven children, five of whom survived to adulthood. It’s just this wonderful Victorian-style iconography.
I actually really don’t like using that term for Victorian for American silver or even American Victorian.
CAC: I know what you mean, it doesn’t quite get it right. But can you elaborate?
JB: It doesn’t get it right for a couple of reasons. Number one, Victoria was a British monarch and we’ve severed ties in 1776. But the other thing is that from the 18th to early 19th century, Americans were copying English forms. What was popular in England was popular in America. But as the nineteenth century progressed, we developed our own styles to the point that after the mid 19th century, the English start copying American styles. In fact, at the Paris exhibition 1867, Gorham, Tiffany, WMC, and Dominick & Half all go head-to-head. Elkington, the big English silver manufacturer, wanted to buy Tiffany’s entire inventory at the exhibition. But Tiffany said no. So, Elkington sent people over to New York to buy things to take back and copy over the next few years. The fashion went from England to America until after the Civil War. Then it started flowing back, and they start copying us.
The English are very jealous at the same exhibition because Tiffany had mixed metals like they gilt copper combined with silver. By law in England, silversmiths could not combine silver with another metal like that. As the 19th century progressed, Elkington started thinking about how to create that mixed metals effect without actually applying a different metal to the silver. They began chasing the part of the pattern in relief and then plate with yellow gold, green gold, or rose gold.
CAC: There are quite a number of idiosyncratic silver forms developed for special social rituals and functions. Are there any memorable ones that you have crossed paths with?
Epergne, 1766-67
Thomas Heming (active 1745–73)
British silver
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
JB: Well, one of my favorite objects in silver is the epergne. In England during the Georgian period, you’ve got this French service where all the foods are on the table when people walk in the room, everything except the main course. That’s why you see the phrase “covered entrée dish.” An entrée back then was the side dish, and that meant it was on the table when guests entered in the dining room. So, the table was very crowded.
Today people use these epergnes, these centerpieces with hanging baskets for flower arrangements and decorative fruit arrangements. But they actually were part of formal serving. The little surrounding hanging baskets held expensive spices so that they weren’t just wasted on the plates during the course of the meal. People would actually dip the point of the knife into the basket or dish that was hanging on the epergne for whatever they needed. When the plates were cleared, you didn’t lose any of the spices which were the most expensive thing in the house at that time.
The center basket held the fruit for the dessert course. There is a Boswell writing about a dinner he attended where the host created some pretext to remove the rarest and most expensive fruit from the epergne before dessert was served. With the idea that everybody has seen it but not going to eat. Yes, I think the epergne is very interesting even though its original function has been mostly forgotten.
CAC: That makes me think of the pineapple used as a centerpiece in Georgian dining. They would rent them out but weren’t really supposed to eat them.
JB: Right and of course in Charleston, the pineapple would be put on the gate after the Captain had returned home and rested. It indicated that he ready to take visitors and talk about his travels. You were welcome to come and listen to his stories.
CAC: It pains me to acknowledge that increasingly antique silver is at risk of being melted down for its scrap metal value. Do you have any thoughts or recommendations to share with those who may be contemplating melting down their silver?
JB: I don’t see melting with clients. Unfortunately, I do see it with dealers. I know a couple of pickers who tell me they buy below scrap. If they can sell to an antiques dealer, that’s great, and it they don’t, then they can scrap it and make money. Fortunately, what I have seen among pickers that pieces scheduled to be re-melted is nothing important. It’s not a Fletcher and Gardiner piece or a Gorham mixed-metal object. They usually can find a buyer for that.
It’s more the International Silver from the 1930s to the 1950s that is being melted. It’s household wedding items basically. From what I can tell, nothing major is getting melted. But, you hear the horror stories. One antiques dealer in the 1980s remembered trying to buy up as much as she could, but she still saw pieces of Gorham Martelé and period Georgian pieces being melted.
Now the other side of that, I met a retired engraver and jeweler in New York. He would buy items at scrap value but keep them because he knew it was worth more than just the metal. When he retired, he had a bunch of good Georgian and good Chinese export pieces. He sent them all up to Christie’s and sold them for a lot more than the scrap price.
He was also able to sell a lot of Hester Bateman silver before the bottom fell out of that market.
Sugar Tongs, 1774-76
Hester Bateman (active 1761–90)
British silver
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
CAC: Can you tell me more at about the market for Hester Bateman?
JB: Hester Bateman was one of the first angels to fall when it comes to silver. She was highly prized as a woman silversmith in a male-dominated industry.
What generally happens with silver makers is that research and publication cause a spike in price. For example, when the book on the Richardson family of Philadelphia came out, Richardson silver became especially popular.
So, literature can drive prices except with Hester Bateman. The literature caused the opposite effect because it turns out she never worked at the bench making silver. She had inherited the factory from her husband who was a chain maker. With the help of a wealthy banker friend, she was able to register her mark at a goldsmith’s hall and also get financing to increase the production to make sterling flatware and hollow-ware as opposed to just being a chain maker. She never actually touched silver or raised a piece of silver in her life. When this information came out, we saw the price of Bateman silver plummet because not only was she not making it herself, but she was given a little bit of a pass when it came to quality of workmanship.
CAC: What advice would you give clients who have silverplated items and are wondering what to do with them?
JB: Generally speaking, silverplate is not as valuable as sterling. You can make that statement just about every day and be right – except.
When you’re looking at old Sheffield plate, they used the process of fusing the metals together before making the piece as opposed to electroplating. Basically prior to 1850, old Sheffield plate can still be valuable.
And then there are some whimsical pieces that were produced by the better makers like Gorham and to a lesser extent by Tiffany in the mid 19th century. These can bring high prices. For example, Gorham produced a silverplate terrapin service with individual terrapin bowls. When one of these bowls comes up at auction, it can bring $3,000-5,000.
Generally speaking, 20th Century silverplate is not of great value, but if you got something that’s attractive, then use it and enjoy it. Don’t worry about it.
Form is also important. If you got a pair of silverplated candlesticks of simple baluster form with a removable branch, they’re probably are not of great value. But if it’s a Corinthian column form and silverplate from the late 19th century, it’s still worth more than most silverplate from the 20th century.
CAC: Could you clarify the term “coin silver” for our readers?
Presentation Vase, 1824
Thomas Fletcher (American, 1787–1866) and Sidney Gardiner (American, 1787–1827)
Silver
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
JB: Sure, I love the phrase American coin silver. It used to be so misunderstood when I started collecting. It basically means anything made in this country before 1865, referring to this period where melting coins was a major source for raw materials.
I remember when I was in an antique shop one time and picked up a Gorham baby cup that was absolutely gorgeous. The antiques dealer said, “Oh that’s just coin silver. This is sterling, much better.” And he hands me this 20th-century baby cup by Tiffany & Co that I know is after the company turned production over the Lunt Silversmiths. And the dealer incorrectly thought it was more valuable. But now people have a better understanding of what the phrase means.
Silversmiths had three major sources of raw material. One was sterling bars in workable form imported from England, but they were highly taxed. The other was older pieces that were being refashioned. And then there were coins as a major source of raw material. Most coinage was the Spanish milled dollar, which U.S. Congress recognized as legal tender in 1792. These Spanish coins came mostly from Cuba and Mexico.
But the Tariff of 1842 on luxury goods changed everything. It caused a spike in the silver price for imported pieces, including beloved English silver. But the Tariff also required the taxes had to be paid at the docks in coinage. All of the sudden, there’s an influx of raw material for making silver items.
CAC: You’re clearly a teacher as well as an historian. What advice would you give to fellow personal property appraisers?
JB: For all appraisers, the most important thing is connoisseurship. It doesn’t matter what the category of object is – silver, furniture, or rugs. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, you can’t do your job. I think it’s crucial to properly recognize the item. Getting identification right is the basis for determining value.
Many thanks to Joseph P. Brady for chatting with Worthwhile Magazine. You can learn more about Joseph P. Brady Appraisal Services at silverappraisal.com.
© Worthwhile Magazine 2020