posted 05-13-2010 10:42 PM            

Does anyone know who actually made this pattern? Also this spoon has a pronounced shelf-like feature that surrounds the bowl. This feature seems more common on spoons made in France, but was used by several American manufacturers. Does anyone have a name for this feature or know who invented it? I think that this design feature would make the edge of the spoon last longer.

posted 05-13-2010 11:49 PM            

I find similar bowls on quite a bit of Scandinavian silver too. The most common misconception that I run across is that if they are pointy, they must be some type of fruit spoons.....

posted 05-21-2010 04:18 AM            

I've put together a montage of the most similar of the different Kings versions as an aid to distinguishing them:

The differences are sometimes subtle, but not always. Krider's has a floret between the two anthemions (stylized honeysuckle shoots) where all the others have a dot. Wallace has extra side swirls above the lower set of scrolls. The tip of the Polhamus handle is a stylized shell, which in all the other versions becomes a boss with a 'crown' of beads.

That boss is one of the first things I look at; notice how the Krider, D&H, and Gorham versions have a horizontally flattened boss, while in the Wendt, Whiting, and Wallace versions it's more nearly round.

Another set of distinctions can be found by studying the anthemions and their positioning in relation to the lower set of scrolls.

The shape of the stylized nine-lobed shell in the upper handle is rounder in some versions (Polhamus, Wendt, Gorham, Whiting) and more elongated in others (Krider, Wallace), with D&H intermediate between the forms.

D&H and Krider are the two versions that most closely resemble each other; apart from the floret, the differences between the two are very subtle.

This topic, by the way, only just barely makes it into the 'before sterling' section: Krider began making his pattern while still working in coin, though the vast majority of his firm's production of the pattern was in sterling. Wendt Kings pieces that I've seen have all been either sterling or 950. Many, if not all, Polhamus or Polhamus & Strong Kings pieces were retailed by Tiffany and were sterling.

The version of Kings that prevailed in the pre-sterling era is the same as the British Kings pattern. The designs here, which came in as the sterling transition was getting underway, all have much more in common with the British 'Queens' pattern.

posted 05-28-2010 12:01 AM            

Ellabee,

You may already have knowledge of the above variations in the Kings pattern, but if not the forks from the bottom up are marked for R and W Wilson, William Gale and Son, Samuel Wilmot, Jones, Low and Ball, and Frederick Marquand. They range in size from 7 ¾” to 8 ½”. The Marquand fork is the longest, but it and the Wilmot fork have the shortest tines. The Marquand fork is without a monogram, but does have an engraved bird. Perhaps that identified the owner. The rest all have monograms. The Wilmot fork is the only one that is down turned and the Wilmot and the Wilson forks are patterned only on the front side. The shoulders of each fork are different and there are slight variations in the pattern, but the differences really are rather minor.

posted 05-29-2010 06:25 PM            

Every maker of any size in the 1830s and 1840s pretty much had to have some verions of the pattern, and those early ones were mostly much closer to the British Kings:
- concave shell on the front of the handle, convex on the back;
- threaded stylized-shell at the top of the tip (echoed most clearly in the Polhamus 'Kings'), rather than a boss with beading above it;
- stylized leaves at the edges rather than scrolly swirls;
- one set of long thick side scrolls rather than two separate shorter thick scrolls around the out-swelling portions of the "fiddle"; and
- equal-sized anthemions rather than a taller on top of a smaller one.

There are exceptions to everything, and the Wm. Gale version's convex shell is most interesting to me. Gale held the patent for roller dies from 1826-1840, and during that period was one of the biggest makers of spoons in the country. Was a Kings version one of the patterns produced during that prolific period? Was it the one shown? If so, it's quite probable that the Gale version may have influenced those later makers in the sterling takeover period who went to the Queens-like form while calling it 'Kings'.

It's worth noting that the Gale pattern shown is a hybrid, rather than a full Queens version: still has stylized leaves on the side, equal anthemions, and one long set of side scrolls rather than two shorter ones.

Reed & Barton's 'Kings' and Gorham's 'Kings II' are like the British and early versions shown in ahwt's image.

posted 05-30-2010 02:18 PM            

Another example from that same decade is the one produced by Samuel Kirk. Like wev's example, the Kirk version is single-struck and with a down-turned handle, which made it quite "old-fashioned" within only a few years of its introduction -- yet it stayed in production deep into the 20th century.

There's a piece of Kirk 'King' on one of the big antiques sites in which the leaves along the sides are intricately textured with chasing, a subtle evocation of the patterns for which the firm is better known.

posted 05-30-2010 02:54 PM            

They also all have the lion-S-shield mark that is often said to be the maker's mark of George Sharp. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but he didn't make those Krider pieces. Another theory about that mark is that it was Bailey's symbol for sterling, which makes more sense in this case than Sharp putting his maker's mark on pieces immediately identifiable as Krider's in the Philadelphia market.