Willoughby: Silver candelabras and silverware

A question I have sometimes pondered tickles my fancy; I don’t have an answer but will share the thought process.

The question: What might Aspenites in the mining era have thought about pulling silver out from beneath our mountains and then buying silver products that might have used the silver they extracted from them?

One obvious example is silverware. You may have silverware passed down to you from a few generations ago. Compared to today, it is bulky and heavy; it also contains a great deal of silver in it. There were six Aspen stores from 1885 to well into the 1890s selling silverware.

You can conclude that buying/owning silverware then was an economic extravagance because it was sold mostly in jewelry stores. J.E., Freeman and Co. sold jewelry, watches, clocks, and silverware. F.J. Hooper and Co. had similar merchandise. The Diamond Palace, that promised silverware at Eastern prices, sold clocks, diamonds, and watches.

The Crescent Jewelry Co. — also known as Knickerbocker and Williams, advertising the “most complete line of silverware” — sold two versions: solid silverware and plated silverware; they also offered engraving. If you have silver cups and especially serving trays from that period, you often see a family member’s name engraved.

L.R. Phillips and Co. shows that silverware was the more expensive because they sold tinware. They also sold table cutlery and cooking stoves but not jewelry, watches, and clocks.

Another extravagance of the period featured silver candelabras. They go back into antiquity but were popular Victorian table decorations for affluent families. This was the period of Carnegie and Guggenheim, where the public ogled their lifestyle and possessions. Silver cost more than tin; at that time, silver produced in Aspen was worth around $26 an ounce in today’s dollars. One fork would certainly have that much silver in it; even a silver-plated one would have a dollar’s worth of silver.

But that is just the beginning.

If you have antique silverware stored away in storage containers and only use them for special occasions, you know that they tarnish and need to be cleaned and polished for use. Meyer Guggenheim, whose fortune started in mining silver in Leadville around the time of early Aspen, would likely have favored silver silverware, but he had servants to maintain them. Carnegie employed, they think, a staff of 80 for his 64-room, 55,000-square-foot New York mansion.

Silver platters of all sizes were used to serve guests and to keep the wine glasses from spilling onto the furniture. The online ads today for silver platters from that period have prices mostly between $200 and $600. One that caught my eye, with intricate designs engraved, is advertised as “impressive and heavy” and offered for $17,880. The heavy part and the price signal many ounces of silver in it.

Taking it all back to 1890s’ Aspenites, there were likely some miners who could not afford such items. What might they have thought about that? Maybe none of them thought much about it, as silver also went to the mint for silver dollars. And this was the beginning of photography, and some silver was used for photographs. Jewelry stores had silver items, and many of those might have been affordable to most miners. Imagine a miner presenting a silver wedding proposal ring busting with pride thinking that his sweat labor could have produced the silver for that ring.

Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching at Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now a tourist in his native town, he views it with historical perspective. Reach him at redmtn2@comcast.net.