Many people turn their attention lately as of the financial crises start collecting Alpacca tableware rather than the Christofle. Therefore, i thought that it would be useful describe both types and i will start by the Alpacca. The Alpacca (Also called German silver ) is silvery, hard, corrosion-resistant, ductile, malleable alloy of copper, nickel, and often zinc, used in tableware and as a structural material for hospital and restaurant equipment. WMF is the abbreviation for Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik, which means Württemberg Metal Factory and was created in 1880 in the small town of Geislingen on the river Steige (Geislingen an der Steige), after the successful merger of two smaller silver plate foundries. This company is still active nowadays. This firm has an unbeatable reputation as a pioneer in silver plate production of Art Nouveau items. The famous Antiques Price Guide of Judith Miller (published annually by Dorling Kindersley Ltd.) gives two whole pages for the description of WMF metal ware Art Nouveau products. In this catalogue no other European firm, active in this area in the beginning of XX century, is mentioned, neither Christofle, nor Arthur Krupp Berndorf, nor Wellner. The auction prices for WMF pieces are also rather high. At the same time the silver coating on WMF items is usually of much lower quality than that on the products of the above-named firms. This could be explained by the history of this foundry. Carl Haegele, head of a small enterprise which was a predecessor to WMF, produced his first electro-plated items rather late, in 1871. On the contrary, Charles Christofle, already had in 1844 a similar technology in operation. It should be also emphasized that WMF factory made a lot of experiments with different base metals for silverplating, which often turned out to be worse than common Alpacca.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 13:50:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015