An Impressive Sterling Silver Gilt Dinner Service in the "Violet" Pattern Made for Washington Augustus Roebling and Emily Warren Roebling, Gorham Mfg. Co., Providence, RI, Most Pieces 1960, With Some Earlier Pieces Dated 1889

All cast, chased, and engraved with shell and wave borders and violets, comprising a large rectangular meat dish, a small rectangular meat dish, two bread dishes, a side dish for jardiniere, two footed oil and vinegar stands, a footed double vegetable dish, two footed olive dishes, two footed condiment stands, a creamer, a sauceboat, a pair of candlesticks, a footed slop bowl, seven various serving spoons or servers, seven dinner knives, ten luncheon knives, nine dinner forks, eleven luncheon forks, ten fish forks, and seven seafood forks, most items engraved "Roebling" and/or with date "1865-1890," and purpose of vessel. (78 items total).

16 1/2 in. x 12 in. (largest), Total weight: 530.54 oz. t. (weighable silver)

Provenance:

Washington Augustus Roebling (1837-1926) and Emily Warren Roebling (1843-1903), and Mary G. Roebling (1905-1994) and Paul Roebling (1934-1994), thence by descent.

A Pennsylvania gentleman.

Note:

Washington A. Roebling is best-known as the civil engineer who built the Brooklyn Bridge, and his wife Emily W. Roebling took over and finished the project after he fell ill. The construction began in 1869 and was completed in 1883.

This sumptuous dinner service attests to the Roeblings' extreme wealth, made possible not only by these large-scale engineering projects but also Washington's stake in the company founded by his father John A. Roebling, which produced electrical and telegraph wire and bridge cable.

Mary G. Roebling, Washington's granddaughter-in-law, inherited the service, and with the help of her son, Paul Roebling, continued to add to it in the 1960s by commissioning Gorham to produce new pieces made in the same pattern. This lot represents only a portion of the larger service. Mary is best-known as a banking magnate who was the first female president of a major U.S. bank, Trenton Trust Company.

Photocopies of the original invoices from Gorham, dated June 1 and August 1, 1960, along with other related documents accompany this lot.

To request further details about this lot, please email ataggart@freemansauction.com

Previews will take place at our 2400 Market St gallery. Please contact the Auction Specialist for details.

Lynda Cain

VP, Head of Department, American Furniture, Folk and Decorative Arts

lyndacain@freemansauction.com 267.414.1237

Lynda Cain serves as a Vice President of Freeman's and is the Head of Department for American Furniture, Folk and Decorative Arts.
She specializes in American furniture and decorative arts, Native American art, American folk art, and Pennsylvania furniture and decorative arts.
Cain joined Freeman's in 2001 as the company's first American furniture and decorative arts specialist. She began her career in American Decorative Arts as assistant curator at the Detroit Historical Museum. In 1984 she became curator of costume at the Detroit Historical Museum. In 1986, she relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts and switched from museum work when she joined the American Furniture and Decorative Art Department at Skinner Inc., Bolton and Boston, Massachusetts. Before leaving New England in 1997, she had the great pleasure of directing the cataloguing project of the Folk Art Collection of Nine Fletcher and Bertram K. Little at Cogswell’s Grant, Essex, Massachusetts for the Society of the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now Historic New England. Ms. Cain joined the cast of the popular PBS series Antiques Roadshow in Season 19.
Growing up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, she was greatly influenced by the rich collections of American paintings, furniture, and decorative arts held by Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum. She notes her good fortune of working in our two great “attic states:” Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Each Commonwealth has tremendous inventory of historic material, great institutions, and citizens who treasure their inherited and collected items. Cain appears on the television Antiques Roadshow as an appraiser of decorative and folk arts.

Andrew Taggart

Associate Vice President, Specialist, American Furniture, Folk and Decorative Arts

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American Furniture, Folk and Decorative Arts

An Impressive Sterling Silver Gilt Dinner Service in the "Violet" Pattern Made for Washington Augustus Roebling and Emily Warren Roebling, Gorham Mfg. Co., Providence, RI, Most Pieces 1960, With Some Earlier Pieces Dated 1889

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