Hi I’ve always wondered why rare silver seems to cap at 5 figures at the most, whereas paintings from the masters can go for hundreds of millions (theoretically, the Mona Lisa might sell for a billion if it went for sale). Just wondering what you all thought about this.
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Good question, even bronze and marble pieces fetch bigger prices 
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Well as a visual artist, printmaker and antique dealer, also having done a BA Fine Art degree I studied the theory as well as the practice of Fine Art I felt compelled to try and answer this.
I would come to the conclusion that Fine Art paintings, sculptures and all non-commercial art (which is what Fine Art is) is usually created as a unique stand alone or commissioned and or bespoke item. Therefore you cannot find another the same (as an original). Although, especially in printmaking, a series of originals can be printed off, but each one will be slightly different in either colour depth or even a different colour completely.
If you compare this with a silver item, which even if hand made would be more or less the same as the others produced at the same time. So therefore several buyers would have the chance of finding another like it, even if it was a limited addition.
I would therefore conclude that the higher price of Fine Art is more to do with its uniqueness than its aesthetic value. Silver on the other hand has a limit to its aesthetic value, causing it to inevitably cap at a certain price. Also people are always bearing in mind that the value of silver, in how it fluctuates up and down.
This is only my educated guess though.
Hope this helps
Liz
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Because, for the most part, silver, especially domestic flat and hollowware, is not merely art but form vital utilitarian devices which happen to be crafted out of a precious metal, not primarily an artistic creation.
Even the most carefully and meticulously constructed items are expected by the owners to serve three functions:
A utensil, a demonstration of wealth and power and a bankable commodity.
No purely artistic piece can lay claim to this triple functionality.
That antique silver survives at all, given the vicissitudes of both fashion and fiscal shortfall is little short of amazing.
The UK which has been a relatively war-free internally since the 1640’s is a treasure trove of late 17th , 18th, 19th and 20th century silver. Nothing much earlier as it was illegal to hold when both the King and Cromwell needed it to pay soldiers.
Now having said all that there are museums with great collections of finely crafted silver in both Europe and the Americas. Those collections will continue to increase in value as age makes keeping them a longer more expensive investment but, and this is crucial, they are unlikely to experience the snakes and ladders sort of price journey art works suffer as their genre falls in and out of favour.
CRWW
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I think celebrity has a lot to do with it too. Outside of the silver collector community, not a lot of silversmiths have the celebrity glamour of Rembrandt, Monet, or Picasso, and the exception proves the rule: an otherwise unremarkable, yet genuine Paul Revere silver bowl would probably fetch close to a mil, mainly because Longfellow made him a star.
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Did you know the now eponymous Liberty bowl was never even recorded in his day books as have been made in his shop? Doesn’t mean it wasn’t but it was regarded as sufficiently ordinary to escape cataloguing even in the production records.
The now-famous bowl is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Its iconic shape having inspired many reproductions often called “Revere Bowls” . But did he make it? The museum predictably argues perhaps not but the shop certainly did.
In his time Revere’s income fluctuated. Before the revolution, it was as high as £294 or as low as £11 in any given year.
As a successful master craftsman and shop owner, his average annual income was £85 per year. A journeyman might earn £45 per year, while a labourer would take home £30.
In the early 1760s that labourer might be able to afford a child’s spoon for eight shillings or a pair of silver knee buckles for £6/8 pence but not a coffee pot, worth over £17. Paul Revere paid £16 for a year’s rent on his Boston home
A small creamer cost £2/2/- in 1762. At the same time, a teapot with a wooden handle, probably much like the one Revere is holding in the Singleton Copley portrait , was £10/16/8/-. In 1763, six teaspoons cost nine shillings, Revere charged £2/3/- for a pair of shoe buckles. (Source Paul Revere House inventory)
So, quick question: what do Trump and Revere have in common? They both sold goods and they are both most famous for political acts rather than manufactory.
Revere tried to support the emerging nation by warning of the impeding arrival of the Brits. Trump tried to destroy it by telling everybody since the British had left, he needed to be the new King/emperor.
Will he make it? Well Washington, aided by Revere et al, did and gullibility is still all the rage in the expanded 13 colonies.
Will we get another iconic bowl out of the effort?
Probably not.
Dust bowl, perhaps.
CRWW
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Even 20th century Revere liberty bowl knockoffs command better prices than English Georgian examples of something similar. I wonder if Benedict Arnold had been a silversmith if his work would go for even more than Revere’s? We do love our villains, though maybe not so much “the insolent menaces of villains in power”.
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Do you think that’s a function of familiarity or genuine understand of the craftmanship?
CRWW
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I would guess familiarity and second cousin celebrity. The sons of liberty bowl is an icon to our American cousins. I guess it wouldn’t matter that the 20th century Revere knock off would be stamped out by the thousands. The Georgian piece would be at least partly hand done and have interesting provenance. No judgement, people should buy what has meaning for them, but something stamped out by Wallace would have less meaning to me me than something carefully overseen by Northcote. But as always, chacun a son gout.
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Thomas the spoon maker or Hannah his widow? Some of Thomas’s spoon designs were very avant garde but Hannah had much wider range even accounting for the fact she sometimes gets credited with Henry Nutting’s work because their marks overlap and are excruciatingly similar.
From Thomas I’ve seen the spoons for which he is renowned, marrow scoops, which I suppose are a form of spoon and some salts with Bristol glass interiors. From his widow, there’s a great teapot in the Met, another came up for auction recently and yes she turned out her share of spoons too.
But I agree anything by either is more interesting than something a machine should take more credit for than an individual craftsman, apprenticed in the previous century.
There’s a spoon coming up for auction in Australia by Thomas. If you can figure out the date you should buy it! The auctioneer has plumbed for the obvious; a lower case d. Maybe he is right.
CRWW