Since about the 13th century, silver has become a traditional material for making tableware. The dishes made of silver became a real jewel. At the mention of silverware, almost popular prints come to mind: old noble estates, long dresses, lush unhurried dinners at a richly set table, served with silver dishes, polished to such an extent that they can be used instead of a mirror in a ladies’ boudoir.
At the beginning of the 19th century, and especially after the 1917 revolution, when money depreciated, silverware could no longer be a guarantee of material stability. Glass and porcelain are in vogue and are looked upon as potential antiques; on occasion, it can be sold for those banknotes that are in use at a given time. To this day, the china and glassware that adorns our sideboards and cabinets is the most popular. Nevertheless, the cost of silver items is still high, and they themselves are in demand.
Even in the Renaissance, an unwritten law appeared that forbade touching common food with your hands. Despite the extremely developed and refined rules of etiquette (many of which were directly related to the practice of preventing infectious diseases), people of the 18th-19th centuries. realized the inadequacy of such measures. Silver dishes to a large extent helped to avoid unwanted diseases due to the healing properties of silver, which were known in antiquity.
Silverware was valued, collected and passed on to inheritance. That is why it is still associated with something aristocratic and very refined, demonstrating the owner’s impeccable taste and, of course, his stable financial position. Silver of those times has now passed into the category of antiques. Owning it is not just a confirmation of status, it is a reason to be proud.
The variety of silverware items is amazing. Silverware can be purchased in the form of a service, or you can also collect it for individual items, a rich assortment of which allows you to compose sets of dishes for morning coffee, lunch, dinner, evening rendezvous. The main rule is that objects should not differ significantly from each other either in size or in design.
It should be remembered that handcrafted silverware is the most valuable and expensive – it is more a piece of art than a household item. As a rule, manual work is used for additional grinding, polishing and engraving.
