posted 05-25-2014 12:07 PM            

Ladle with almonds, to show scale:

posted 01-11-2015 02:33 PM            

Is there anything anyone can tell me about this pattern? I've seen servers (ladles and various spoon-y things) with the same arrangement of three stalks, those round doodads, and various stuff at the end, such as 3D birds like mine, Whiting's "bird's nest" pattern, and 3D flowers. Has anyone seen any other animals? Thoughts about when these were made? Or any other thoughts?

posted 01-11-2015 02:40 PM            

Left to right, here are two Gorham citrus spoons (or something like that); the Whiting bird serving spoon; the Whiting rabbit sauce ladle; a George Sharp punch or soup ladle with a hexagonal, notched handle and a gothic ball end; a George Sharp fork with a hexagonal handle and a ball end (somewhere I have the matching spoon); a squirrel nutpick with a hexagonal handle, probably also Sharp; an unmarked mustard or master salt spoon in the same pattern as that ball-end fork; and a Wood & Hughes teaspoon:

[This message has been edited by Polly (edited 01-11-2015).]

posted 01-12-2015 02:43 PM            

The citrus spoons ARE in fact by Gorham--they have the lion, anchor, g on the back. But the rest of the ones I called Gorham are actually by Whiting.

I love the way so many different American silver makers made objects like these, with subtle differences. They started around 1870, right? And they stopped by the mid or late 1870s? Or did this style go on longer?

The Sharp ones have solid balls on the ends, which makes them unbalanced--the fork is always crashing off the side of the plate, and I imagine you might get mustard on your tablecloth if you weren't careful with the mustard spoon. (Yes, I know, the mustard was a dry powder at the time. But I bet it still would make a mess.) In contrast, the W&H spoon's end is hollow and it's perfectly balanced. It's one of my very favorite spoons to use.

posted 01-12-2015 04:25 PM            

https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/exhibitions/35350903/

When was the last time Rococo was revived? Sort of the 1960s, right? And before that, in the Beaux Arts period when Shiebler Rococo was popular, and before that, in the 1850s. That Cooper Hewitt exhibition made the argument that Art Nouveau was a form of, or maybe a child of, Rococo, and Art Nouveau had a big revival in the 1970s. I always liked Art Nouveau much better than Rococo, myself, but I can see how they're related: curves & highly stylized organic forms.

Steampunk seems to be mostly about a not-especially-history-based nostalgia for the era just before World War I and its machinery. I guess it's missing the organic forms of Rococo and Art Nouveau. But I'm not sure steampunk is the dominant design force right now. I would say the dominant taste is for mid-century modernism and minimalism, the simplicity end of the simplicity-complexity continuum.

Of course, there have always been people who prefer simplicity and people who prefer complexity, even when their taste goes against the general fashion. But fashion does tend to swing back and forth between those two poles.

I'm not sure where these particular pieces (I mean the style of silver in this thread) fall on the simplicity/complexity continuum, though. They're way simpler than lots of 19th century stuff, for example.

There's also the realism-stylization axis. These spoons etc. seem more realistic and less stylized, at least the bird and the bunny do.

posted 11-19-2015 02:50 PM            

Thanks for sharing.