THIS GRACIOUS HERITAGE

foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] dear Linda according to my calendar and your honeymoon postcards you should be approaching the doorstep of your new home about now photos and descriptions of the house enable me to imagine pretty well your arrival I am reconciled to the miles that separate us by the prospect of your marriage beginning in a community new to you and beginning I like to imagine with the freshness of Adventure Adventure happily confined to just you too sentimental yes this is Stephen Grayson being an old sentimentalist from way back into fellow whose business has inclined him to think a good deal about brides and new homes having loved you well my only needs for a number of years having been Enchanted by your wedding and pleased by your Steve I envision your beginning down there in grantwood as if reflected in a magically romantic mirror knowing me you would expect a silvery reflection and you would be rightful in today this reminds me that one of your bridesmaids impressed by your pretty remarkable Treasure Trove of Sterling asked me the prayer force of the age-long love affair between the American Wife and silver an interesting question for as a designer I have spent 35 years in Devotion to the domestic career of this queen of metals without one hour of order my feeling about it will be tangibly represented in your dining room when it's all unpacked and arranged for some of your friends and I entered into a conspiracy to deck you out as The Silver Bride of the year knowing your tastes and admirations I was the chief and soccer we considered and selected and appraised every piece as true Conor says of both Linda and Sterling you know a woman engaged in filmmaking is the most changeable creature her Notions about decor and colors appointments and draperies will change with Seasons moods and weather that which is just right today she will soon abandon there's only one constant unimpropable note the silver note because you see silver is associated with many of our Finest Hours with memorable time with for example your very first supper or Steam [Music] but Silver's plucking at the hot strings goes deeper than the obvious I am thinking of your old old Gorham coffee service inherited from your grandmother Hudson it has been in our family a long long time has brightened mornings of generations of perhaps a hundred of our clan I withheld one piece of it from you my dear for an inscription to make it even more Personally Yours and Ours for this tray speaks to me of fine craft and Splendid artist of more than a century ago it Bears a message in Timeless design from some man of Great Taste who served the Gorham company when it was young that's why I wanted to compose my inscription in the atmosphere from which this inheritance of yours derived so long ago since my first days here I have felt that tradition in the best sense dwelt in these old designing rooms at Providence it is a sense of this tradition this hundred-year-old continuity of purpose and high standards we all to hear that I would like to send with this belated gift meanwhile [Music] meanwhile the library of Gorham design will confirm David Hudson's belief in the historic ageless Dignity of birth in Precious Metals the line of the story is unbroken from Babylon four thousand years ago a story told in silver and gold to Egypt a thousand years before Christ to the refining delicate Exquisite Arts of Greece at our greatest to the great Rebirth of Art and thought we call the Renaissance rest in Rich profusion by Cellini a silversmith and on to the great upheaval and human energy that swept across the seas to make a new world a new nation Paul Revere a silversmith was there flash through history this patriot soldier engraver lashing a foaming horse to Lexington and in this shop of Jabez Gorham Revere's younger contemporary and spiritual Heir his art spelled out something significant to the future of the Young Nation a young giant of a nation whose Works in Precious Metals need not be commissioned by Kings but good in some day not far away satisfy the aspirations of a uniquely ambitious prosperous people it's a matter of record that Peddlers of that early day apprised him that a new generation of Yankee Brides demanded Silver Spoons replacing pewter and the country had scarcely come of age when they are insisting upon rich and heavy and explicit Works which he had trained himself to produce though pounded thus by hand authentic Productions of this time this man and this shop of course are to be found today it is not the mark of the slow shaping by primitive methods that identify as such a bowl to The Connoisseur or makes it a collector's prize the distinguish includes that Gorham and the apprentices he trained left on the Sterling of the infant Gorham company are not quaint crudities but signs of perfection evidence of The Marvelous good taste in which he expressed the Simplicity austerity the freedom of the new nation Rising these notes of taste and fine craft are undated they Prevail today today a century and more later agorum silver vessel spins on a lathe the lathe has evolved like all the Machine Age tools but the artisanship never has wavered the process of spinning is but a modern version of The Potter's Wheel of Omar and as in ancient times it is the hand of the spinner that counts now the product of this hand comes quicker to Perfection than in jaiba's day but the hand itself as with Jabez demands an education of years 130 years ago the first Gorham foresaw and prepared for a society that would rise on the world's highest standard of living and today that standard has brought into being in his name a great manufactory devoted to the design and processing of sterling silver in the great plat at Providence Rhode Island artisanship and individual skills are still Supreme although countless engineering devices of the age have been brought to bear it requires a minimum of four years to school a silver Craftsman and the man who raises this complex design with a tool that is hidden from him has grown in his special expertness over many more years he has grown a second sight in the sensitiveness of his fingers uh and in this branch of silver decoration known as chasing the touch must be equally fine equally precise for the ornamentation to stand forth as its designer planned the surrounding metal must be made to fall to a shadowed level below it in giving effects of perspective of Shadows and Brilliant Highlights the Chaser is a kind of sculptor working with the scrupulous exactness of a jeweler thank you the same skill that enables the engraver to express the styles of many periods is employed to personalize these creations to distinguish one from the other a whole catalog of Coats of Arms and Monograms and scripts are in his Repertory design Origins are Universal [Music] these are tiny Corinthian columns the bowl derives through traceable steps and stages from Chinese antiquity this Simplicity we think of as strictly Puritan and the great Dutch School of Rembrandt inspired this early American design pure abstraction the salad bowl giving illusion of motion so these are materialized dreams of Beauty from many agents and if they appeal mystically to some not quite expressible instinct or taste and loveliness it is because inspired artists plan themselves the artist is Silva's first factor and nowhere will you find him practicing with more imagination than in the creation of patterns or knives forks and spoons the silver designer invariably derives from the practice of other Arts his three-dimensional Sterling forum is closest to sculpture perhaps but whatever his background he is firmly founded in the classics and confined inspiration and antiquity a hopes for quality in silver design is agelessness so he may reach back to Egypt searching out some secret of the Pharaohs to decorate tomorrow's tables together in his major field when he proposes to create say a new Fork he works with techniques that are singularly his whatever his Source whether it be a suggestion of some Renaissance painting discovered in a museum or a flowering shrub growing outside his window he must sooner or later work it out in three dimensions for eventually the peace always must be modeled in plaster like the work of sculpture so that volume and balance will be portrayed for in addition to aesthetic considerations I appeal he's concerned for the Fork's feel in the hand of the user foreign experience in his media he will determine too where thickness will bring a highlight and concavity a shadow on Silver the eventual material of his expression [Music] transference of every detail of a sketched idea into three dimensions is a Cooperative procedure involving highly skilled technical assistance and a high order of criticism [Music] for their final appraisal an enlarged version is required and from this when it has been corrected modified and perfected will come a bronze cast of sufficient strength to when to enter the process of transmitting the original design to hard Steel [Music] the great pantograph machine and its operator copying from the oversized bronze upon the steel of the Fork's eventual Dimensions would appear to be taking over the business of handicraft but actually it is only doing the preliminary work on a die a tool a pattern tool whose Perfection will require the most exacting handicraft It's a Wonderful machine but it cannot give the steel die the clarity the sharpness the fineness to register on Silver at this point then it is taken over by another Artisan whose craft is so precise as to comparable to the work of a specialist in Optical instruments this is the die cutter the die cutter is in reality an artist Carver working in miniature on the hardest of metals employing literally hundreds of stylus-like tools in portraying upon steel every Nuance of the designer's intention when you see and handle an exquisitely fashioned piece of table silver you may remember the practitioners of this little known but infinitely skilled and artistic craft who gave it character [Music] foreign [Music] shape from dyes to Silver the flat sheet of silver is processed in a huge press that stamps out the approximate shape or blank of the piece so under a drop Hammer the steel car of design is impressed upon the Sterling with the Fidelity of permanence that will wear through centuries there remain further handicraft stages perfecting stents trimming buffing polishing every necessary touch to produce the final gleaming pieces as nearly perfect in Finish as human minds and hands can render them as The Silver moves through these processes you will discover from its workers that it has its personalities distinguished and distinguishable its characters romantic characters colored by history and destined for roles in dreamed of homes foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign this is my world of silver Linda where old Beauties Inspire and blend into new ones and here I have had Graven on your grandma Hudson's old Coffee Tree my inscription tying together two women I have loved maybe you will see reflected in it as I imagine I do the secrets of silver the Craftsmen and the artists who have loved working in those who have created those who have cherished it like your grandmother the first Linda and you Linda in a silver continuity reaching to the years of your sons from Linda Hudson born 1879 to Linda Grayson born 1927. made a line run on forever in this gracious heritage thank you