By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn — My interest in silver started when I was a child. One of my earliest memories was opening either my mother or father’s jewelry box and using a magnifying glass to look at all the little marks on the pieces inside. There were also a few pieces of metalwork in our family: a copper coffeepot and a small silver saucepan. My great, great, great grandfather in Sweden made the coffeepot, and my grandfather made the little silver saucepan. He passed away when I was 7. It intrigued me that people...

Old Canadian Silver

By Marius Barbeau — The silver crosses discovered in the past hundred years in old Indian graves from Georgia to Wisconsin and Ontario are all of one type and bear such makers' marks as C A and R C. Puzzled archaeologists at the time of their discovery presumed these initials to mean Cardinal Richelieu and Richelieu Cardinal, because these pieces of silver had been found where they seemed to have been lost during the regime of the French cardinal. One was in a grave mound in Georgia, traced back imaginatively...

The Kalo Shop, a Mecca for Arts and Crafts Sterling Silver

By Maribeth Keane — How did I get started collecting Arts and Crafts silver? My wife and I had been collecting Arts and Crafts items as far back as I can remember, mostly furniture and tiles. One day many years ago I got bit by the silver bug. We lived in California and I’d visit antique dealers and one of them showed me a silver serving spoon by Chicago silver maker Falick Novick. It was beautifully made, the shape was great and it had little marks all over it, which I soon learned are called planishing or...