Sheffield Silver Co.
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Sheffield Silver Co. was an American silver-plate manufacturer based in Brooklyn, New York, active through much of the twentieth century. The company operated in Brooklyn, NY from 1908 to 1950 and later in Norton, MA until around 2000, eventually becoming a division of Reed & Barton in 1974. Despite its name evoking the English city long synonymous with plated wares, the firm was a purely American concern, producing electroplated silver hollowware and flatware for the domestic market rather than fused Sheffield plate, which was never manufactured in the United States.
The company's output was aimed at the mid-market and mid-century American home, turning out a wide range of practical and decorative silverplate hollowware: trays, bowls, coffee and tea services, ice buckets, punch sets, and covered serving dishes, often in the clean, tapered lines associated with mid-twentieth-century American design. Surviving examples on the market today include Art Deco and Hollywood Regency-style ice buckets, hand-chased punch bowl sets, and footed serving bowls, reflecting a firm that catered to entertaining and tableware needs of the postwar era rather than to high-end bespoke commissions.
As a manufacturer rather than an individual artist-silversmith, Sheffield Silver Co.'s collectibility rests less on singular authorship and more on the quality, style, and condition of its wares as representative examples of American mid-century silverplate production. Pieces bearing its mark are sought by collectors of vintage barware, tableware, and Art Deco or mid-century modern decorative silver, valued for their design character and their place within the long lineage of American electroplated silverware houses that flourished before being absorbed into larger conglomerates like Reed & Barton.
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