A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 383)

NEW ORLEANS MADE SILVERWARE OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES by H. Parrott Bacot ADOLPHE HIMMEL (b. 1825/26, Bavaria, Germany – d. 1877, New Orleans, Louisiana) AND CHRISTOPF CHRISTIAN KÜCHLER (active in New Orleans, Louisiana, 1852-1870) Egg Boiler, made for retail through Hyde and Goodrich, 1852-1853 Coin Silver Egg Boiler: 5 x 8 x 4 in. Egg Frame: 11 x 6 x 4 in. Stand: 3 x 6 x 5 in. Lamp: 1 x 4 x 3 in. LSU Museum of Art Gift of the Friends of the Museum Photograph by David Humphreys LOUISIANA NEITHER HAS NOR IS IT CLOSE TO ANY SILVER-MINES, THUS THE procurement of raw silver was difficult in the colonial era. It was through the melting down of damaged and out-of fashion silverware or coins that a smith could procure metal to fashion new objects. Given these circumstances and the fact that Louisiana had a modest population, it is amazing to learn that in the first census taken in 1719 in New Orleans, the year after the founding of the city, there were four men listing their profession as goldsmith. Even after the colony was ceded to Spain in 1768, which brought Louisiana into the sphere of that empire’s silver-rich possession of Mexico, there was little demand for luxury goods. New Orleans and Louisiana’s insubstantial population, half of it enslaved, explains in part the paucity of holloware and to a lesser extent flatware in the eighteenth century. Surely there was more silverware both manufactured locally and imported from Europe that was consumed in the devastating New Orleans fires of 1788 and 1794. There can be little doubt that the majority of the silverware made in eighteenth and early nineteenth century New Orleans was flatware. Indeed, the small footless beakers popular in France and the equally small footed beakers following AngloAmerican design are in the holloware forms seen in early nineteenth century New Orleans. The best candidate for the earliest known piece of silver made in New Orleans is a soup spoon in the French fiddle-back pattern fashioned from heavy gauge silver. The work of Pierre Coudrain (1729-1779), the spoon ties New Orleans to St. Louis in the Upper Mississippi Valley through its original owner, Marie Chouteau. The utensil was probably made prior to her departure in 1770 to become the common-law wife of Pierre Laclède, the New Orleans-born fur trader who founded St. Louis in 1764. The French tradition of having a limited number of pieces in a place setting of flatware exists even today, consisting of a large multipurpose fork, a tablespoonsize soup spoon and a small spoon for tea and coffee. The fourth piece was a steel blade knife, which usually had a bone or ivory handle. This custom was followed in colonial and early nineteenth century Louisiana, however, few of the almost diminutive coffee/teaspoons have survived in sets of flatware. The plain fiddleback pattern continued to be in vogue with Creole families until as late as 1845. This French tradition is in direct contrast with the expansion of the size of place settings initiated in Britain and Anglo-America during the late eighteenth century. Dessert and fruit spoons were introduced first but the number of special utensils for every function at the table increased prodigiously. By the midVictorian era, there might have been as many as ten pieces in the properly appointed Anglo-American place setting. Louisianians began to following AngloNEW ORLEANS-MADE SILVERWARE OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 383 

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