posted 03-11-2006 02:04 PM            

I found a very interesting pastry server in a local antique mall yesterday, and purchased it because the construction was new to me, and I do not have much arts and crafts silver in my collection.

Looking in Rainwater, Marshall Field was the only possible match, and thanks to an older thread on these forums I have identified it as Marshall Field Colonial pattern.

I've gone to the local library this morning, and put in an inter library loan request for Darling's Chicago Metalsmiths in a effort to find out more.

I thought that even the old hands here might find pictures of it interesting, so I'll try my luck at posting photos again.

It is maybe an eighth of an inch shy of 11 inches long, but it is not monogrammed. I thought it was very interesting that it was marked on the side, rather than the front or back.

I'm sorry that my picture of the server in it's entirety is so dark.

posted 03-11-2006 04:49 PM            

For those who don't know the name, Marshall Fields is one of the grand department stores of Chicago, and I believe the most up-scale, being a little more so than Carson Pirie Scott (its nearest competitor). It's now part of a large conglomerate, of course, but unlike so many of the old regional department stores the name has been kept.

Another department store that apparently made some of its own silver, as well as selling lots from others, was Birks in Montreal [NB: see corrections below]. I've seen many Birks pieces, throughout Canada and the US. Birks also sometimes added their mark to pieces of silver they resold, typically English sterling -- but I think I saw one once with Birks and French marks. I never saw Marshall Fields marked pieces with other makers marks, even though they also sold at some times both antiques and new pieces from other silversmiths.

posted 03-11-2006 11:48 PM            

The Birks website gives a comprehensive history of the firm, and using the Forum search function will yield many posts about the company and its products.

For those interested in 20th Century silver, a well-known Birks' designer and silversmith was Carl Poul Petersen, a son-in-law of Georg Jensen who worked for Birks for many years before establishing his own firm in Montreal.

posted 03-11-2006 11:50 PM            

I am including an attempt to get a good shot of the joint of the blade and handle. It looks like it was made in two pieces and joined together.

posted 03-12-2006 02:04 AM            

Is hammering considered arts and crafts then?

[say....is that M and F connected? That looks rather like the MF on the napkin rings in another thread]

posted 03-12-2006 08:29 AM            

It sure does look like it was made in two pieces! I suppose that with enough skill and effort the irregularities of hand hammering could be reproduced by machine, but that applied handle argues convincingly for a handwrought piece.

I'd be interested in knowing who did the work for Marshall Field. Let us know what you find out with the Darling book. Chicago was a big rail hub though, and Marshall Field wouldn't have had to contract locally.

posted 03-12-2006 12:37 PM            

People I knew who remembered this always said that it was a small operation. And not capable of the volumn of production sold. The supposition was that work was farmed out to other shops, like Kalo. And to the numerous silversmiths who worked in Chicago. Which explains the variations found on MF silver.

The shop did make silver right in front of your eyes. But also had a backup system for larger scale production.\

posted 03-12-2006 02:02 PM            

Darcy Evon of the Chicago Sun Times wrote a comprehensive article about the shop over a year ago and was published in the newspaper.

Sharon Darling also shows an image of the shop and production which also included cast bronze desksets and accessories.

Fred

posted 03-12-2006 05:30 PM            

Outwest, yes, the M and the F are joined together.

posted 03-12-2006 11:16 PM            

quote:

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Chicago institution promoted field
Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 2, 2002 by Darcy Evon

Marshall Field & Co. traces its roots to 1852, when Potter Palmer opened a store that would later become the stalwart institution deeply intertwined with Chicago history.

As Field's marks its 150th anniversary this week, one little- known aspect of its history from 1880 to 1920 deserves special mention, because the store was in the vanguard of the American Arts and Crafts Movement--an artistic impetus that centered on the hand- wrought manufacture of jewelry and objects to beautify the home.

As early as 1878, Mrs. Potter Palmer promoted handmade objects made by women as a means of celebrating art and opening new careers for women. By the turn of the century, Hull House was offering Arts and Crafts metalwork instruction, and artisans were beginning to organize shops and special exhibitions to sell their wares.

Marshall Field & Co. exerted a significant impact on the movement by emphasizing the connection between hand-wrought jewelry and home accessories, demonstrating how seemingly mundane objects such as desk blotters, inkwells and napkin rings can be as elegant as jewelry in the hands of the right craftsmen and women.

By 1903, Field's management established one of the first commercial arts and crafts enterprises in the city. George H. Dufour, an Oak Park resident, organized the Craft Shop in the Field's annex at 25 E. Washington, producing jewelry and silver. In a 1975 letter to the Chicago Historical Society, a Field's executive, Arnold Mason, recalled Dufour as "a jeweler, silversmith and all-around mechanic."

As Craft Shop items soared in popularity, it expanded to employ dozens of men and women, and Dufour moved onto the 10th floor of the State Street building.

Field's institutionalized Arts and Crafts in its retail infrastructure by creating The Kenilworth Gift Shop, which it called "a store within a store."

Actually, Kenilworth was a wholesale enterprise that helped take Chicago's indigenous and distinctive art objects nationwide by selling to other retailers. Craftsmen in Field's Craft Shop produced delightful jewelry and hand-wrought articles in copper, brass, bronze and silver. They introduced an extremely popular Colonial sterling silver pattern that reinforced the fierce independence and Americanism of the movement.

One anonymous writer in 1908 noted, "The distinguishing quality of the Marshall Field and Company Craft Shop is coordinated individualism of production which is artistic and desirable because there is crystallized in each separate article the fine personal impulse of the craftsman."

At times, the demand for hand-wrought silver was so great that Field's commissioned pieces to local master craft workers such as Julius Randahl, a Swedish silversmith who had one of the leading shops in Park Ridge and Chicago.

In 1885, Isadore V. Friedman, a Russian Jewish immigrant born in Kiev, came to Chicago with his family. He later joined the many talented artisans and entrepreneurs who worked in the Craft Shop at the State Street store. Friedman, who later taught metal shop classes at Hull House on the South Side, handcrafted beautiful jewelry and silver items that were selected to be exhibited in the prestigious Annual Applied Arts Exhibits (1902-1923) at the Art Institute of Chicago. He went on to work with many of the major Chicago silversmiths and in his own business.

And thanks to Field's Craft Shop, Ernest Gerlach developed the skills necessary to land a position with the Tre-O Shop in Evanston, an important Arts and Crafts studio founded by Clara Flinn and Hope McMaster in 1908. It was there he met a talented designer and metalsmith, Margery Woodworth, and the two of them launched the Cellini Shop in Evanston around 1914.

The Cellini Shop, named for the fabled Italian silversmith, became so well known for its original designs and use of new materials in handwrought tableware that it thrived well into the 1960s when it merged with the Randahl Shop, later sold to Reed & Barton, and fell into obscurity.

Lucky collectors can often find arts and crafts brooches, bracelets, fobs, desk sets, silver flatware, tea sets, trays and cutlery made by Marshall Field & Co Craft Shop in antique shops, galleries and at eBay.

Darcy Evon is a trade magazine publisher, Sun-Times high-tech columnist and a local arts and crafts expert who is working on a new and updated book about Chicago jewelers and metal workers. She can be contacted at darcyevon@suntimesmail.com.

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posted 03-12-2006 11:46 PM            

• Wikipedia Marshall Field and Company

• [<gone from the internet> chicago.urban-history.org/sites/d_stores/fields.htm]
  Chicago urban history Marshall Field's

• Marshall Field's