Reed & Barton, Artistic Workers in Silver & Gold Plate

Trade catalogs are one of the few and often best sources documenting products and design from a given time and place. This Reed & Barton catalog presents more than 90 categories of products and 2,300 items that reflect the predominant styles and taste during the height of the Victorian era in the United States. The items sold in this catalog range from tea sets, grape shears, soup tureens, floral, figural, landscape and animal centerpieces, revolving butter dishes, toothpick holders, and candelabras, to highly complicated sets of flatware and dinner services. Electroplating in this era and the wider availability of silver made many of these highly ornate objects accessible to the middle class. Although most of the items depicted are designed in the Victorian style, some items trend toward the new movements of Japonisme and aestheticism that were becoming popular at the time.