Cross Linking

Cross Linking Archive Contents

Each archive contains different aspects of the Reed & Barton history. Harvard has business documents, catalogs, patents. RISD has design drawings. AAIM has images used in catalogs. OCHM and various other museums have actual objects. It is only by combining these resources that the true history of the objects, the company and the people involved come back to life today.

This section is imagined to expand and offer lesson plans for eduction that use objects to help investigate a variety of topics.

Old Colony History Museum

Teapot 2795

Baker Library,

Harvard Business School

Old Colony History Museum

c.1876

National Museum of American History

Being able to compare an actual object to the images created to sell it unlocks a lot of information. Photography was useful for recording images in the 1870s, but not yet for reproducing images in print. Small-volume sales catalogs used actual photographic prints, though the images are unusual looking, as the silver was coated or left unpolished to help the forms read better without harsh reflections. Large-volume publications used wood-block and later metal-plate versions of those photographs to allow reproducing the images in quantity. Examining the differences between object, photograph, and engraving helps explain decisions about how to market the objects, and which aspects of their design mattered to consumers.

RISD Special Collections

Designs for the US Navy

USS Wichita

The Winterthur Library

USN monogram, 1914

RISD Special Collections

USS Blue

The Winterthur Library

USS Helm

The Winterthur Library

In addition to producing all of the silver-plated flatware and hollow ware used for decades on US Navy ships, Reed & Barton created sterling silver services for a number of battleships (USS Arizona, USS Utah) and there are designs on paper for other ships that were not executed, or wound up being made by different manufacturers. World War II saw Reed & Barton take on and master manufacturing in stainless steel, providing the US Navy with as many as 200,000 pieces a week. Comparing various sources (contracts, expense sheets, drawings, objects) lets us consider the close relationship between Reed & Barton and Navy governance, which also involved a variety of personal and family connections. Design process is evident as objects move from rough sketch on tracing paper to finished renderings, technical blueprints, and then finished objects. The development of technology is evident in the shift from silver-plated nickel to stainless steel, and naval hierarchy is clear in the varying quality of wares made for different levels of officer. Because the sterling silver sets were made with money raised by local governments and fundraising drives in each state a ship was named for, there are opportunities to consider social history as well.

USS New Mexico

The Winterthur Library

USS Houston, 1929

RISD Special Collections

USN, 1939

RISD Special Collections

Old Colony History Museum

USS Utah, 1911

Library of Congress

USS Arizona, 1919

Arizona Memory Project

USS Utah, 1911

Library of Congress

Belle Kogan

Industrial designer Belle Kogan produced a number of designs for Reed & Barton in 1936. There are at least seven designs (all found in the Dallas Art Museum collection) that went into production, perhaps more. The drawing for the most prevalent piece, the covered serving dish, are in Special Collections at the RISD Library. Drawings for other pieces have not yet been located. The lower corner of this drawing is missing, but laying it over another drawing with her signature stamped in the corner shows that the tear is not accidental. The page has been carefully removed around the contours of her signature. There are multiple explanations. In-house designers might have been angered that an outsider was brought in to introduce a more modern style. Because the design relies on existing tooling and forms already being manufactured, the design department might have thought this update didn’t deserve a new attribution. Reed & Barton did not at this point attach any names to any designs, so removing this signature might have been a way to maintain that collective spirit. It could also be that the men in the design office didn’t like developing the work of a (then still rare) female designer. We have no way to know for sure, but the physical evidence is fascinating.