But I digress...

Yes, digress, transgress, regress... That's our sad story here.

Let's delay the journey into three-dimensionality for now and talk a bit more about die-struck silver, the next technological innovation after die-rolling and the process by which most grand patterns of the 1880's were produced. Just what is a die? How is it made? Do you stick one into a huge drop press, put a blank in place, pull a lever and BANG out comes a finished piece of Durgin NEW ART?

Hardly.

A flatware die is an intaglio cut image on a piece of heavy, hardened steel which is key fitted into a massive drop press. This requires some serious manufacturing capability. The Gorham factory in Providence, for example, was an iron reinforced structure with Rock Maple floors over an inch thick.

Gorham photo

With designer's model in hand, the die sinker used hardened steel tools to pick out the pattern, alternating between sinking the design and checking his progress by pressing gum into the work, in order to produce a positive image. When completed, the die itself was flame-hardened. At least eight dies were required to make a given piece, the first simply to produce an outline, then each one carved successively in greater detail. Ornate designs such as Durgin's Iris

could require 12 dies per side (the best patterns are decorated front and back,

or "double struck") to manufacture a single spoon. Here is the final die for a Gorham electroplated fork, circa 1910.

It measures 9 3/4 by 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 inches, and weighs approximately 25 pounds. So the next time you admire a piece of flatware from your collection, consider the art of the die sinker, cutting that elaborate design, by hand, into solid steel.

What makes it Good?

Let's begin the little bloggie by tackling a big question. Why are some flatware patterns considered to be great, and valued on the secondary market at a premium of ten or more times their silver value, when the vast majority of second hand silver carries no premium at all beyond scrap? Here's a good rule of thumb: the more three dimensional a pattern is, the greater likelihood that it has some appreciable value in the marketplace.


Why is this? Pattern silver as we now know it was launched by the die rolling process, patented by Michael Gibney in the mid 1840's. There are those who might make a case for an earlier beginning in the swaged decorations used on fancy back spoons during the Colonial era, but this primitive flat steel die could only make one imprint at time when struck by hand with a hammer blow. Die rolling allowed for the first mass production of pattern silver, but few of those early efforts such as Tuscan, Gibney, or Mayflower are now sought by collectors. Move forward about forty years, and contrast this with the work of Antoine Heller, arguably the greatest flatware designer of all time. Heller was trained as a sculptor, and his work in bas relief




evokes an uncanny sense of three-dimensionality.

But why settle for an illusion, when you can have an actual sculpture in silver, albeit a miniature, grace your dinner table? That will have to serve as fodder for our next posting...