Silver Scenes

The term “blast from the past” may be a vulgar way of putting it, but that’s exactly what Bill Barol’s article on Chantilly silverware did to me ("American Made,” November 1989). My grandmother inherited a huge set of it, bought sometime after 1912, from her stepmother. It was originally for sixteen, but time and moving from the city to the country reduced its number to the odd twelve, fourteen, ten, and in an extreme case, five! My grandmother died in 1978, when I was still a boy, but the picture of these silver pieces conjured up many a Christmas and Thanksgiving supper wrought by her hands, occasions that deserved nothing less than these gleaming utensils that saw the light twice a year. Thanks for the reminder.