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Topic: Meriden question

LYDIAHOUSE@aol.com
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posted 11-17-2003 07:44 AM

Can you help me find out more about a piece of silver plate that I have inherited. It is a cake basket, I believe, with a blue bird on each side. The piece is very ornate and
has 1868 stamped on one foot. The other foot shows the Meriden name and the scales logo, but the lower half of the logo is not printed because of the shape of the foot.
When I look up Meridan I can't seem to find any helpful info. Any suggestionss would be appreciated.

Lydia House

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Dale

Posts: 2132
Registered: Nov 2002

posted 11-17-2003 03:11 PM

The Meriden Brittania Company is one of the great swamps of silver research. Whenever one begins to approach it problems spring up. It appears that it was a major manufacturer of both holloware and flatware. And it further looks as if MBC also marketed other people's wares. Sometimes these are marked MBC, sometimes not. My guess would be that prior to the formation of International Silver, MBC had already begun working informally with the firms that would form IS.

There are a couple of books on the subject by Edmund Hogan. He was an long time employee of the company, beginning in 1918 and worked apparently to the end in the mid 1980;s. His books are concerned mainly with design trends, highlighting exceptional pieces and new styles. He also goes into the history primarily from a local interest point of view. And tries to explain the relationships among the dysfunctional Rogers families.

Hogan told me long ago in a phone conversation that the records of the company were a total mess. He had possesion of them and was trying to make some headway in organizing them. To support his effort he sold photo copies of a number of post 1900 patterns. Ken Diebel, one of the first researchers in plated flatware, said the record storage was at the grocery bag level. The records probably are in the possesion of Hogan's heirs.

If you could post a picture of this, perhaps we could give you more information. The history of the MBC and its products is enormously confusing.

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