Gilded-Age Silver with the Gilded Gentleman

Curious Objects

A couple of months ago, Ben Miller turned up at the Salmagundi Club in New York’s West Village to assume an unfamiliar role: that of interviewee rather than interviewer, sharing his expertise on nineteenth century American silver with the audience of the Gilded Gentleman. It’s a conversation that we are proud to present to you now. Silvery was in a state of flux during the nineteenth century. Discoveries of huge lodes such as the Nevadan mother given its name by Henry Comstock, new production methods like silver plating, and most importantly, the maturation of the domestic industry, were shifting American styles from the Englishisms of Paul Revere to the Yankee grandeur that was Gorham, and the glory that was Tiffany. That’s the metanarrative. But Ben and GG host Carl Raymond don’t shy away from pesky niceties such as the difference between the silver of Louis Comfort Tiffany and his father, Charles, the importance (or unimportance) of hallmarks, and the most consequential question for listeners hoarding family silver in the attic: whether nineteenth-century services have value beyond their weight in . . . well, silver.

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