Lot Details
Lot 141
Rare Gorham Banko Iron and Sterling Silver Vase
1883
The cylindrical body applied with Japanesque dragon, fan and figural medallion, all on a shaped ring foot. Height 8 inches.
Japan had remained a closed society until 1854 when American Admiral Matthew C. Perry opened the Japanese Empire to the West and its relatively unknown arts and crafts took the West by storm. Western artisans and craftsmen first became acquainted with the exotic images of Japanese woodblock prints and examples of mixed metal objects at the London Exposition of 1862 and again at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Japanese craftsmen's mixing a variety of metals, such as silver, gold, copper and iron for decorative purposes was an entirely new concept to Western silversmiths, and the two greatest American makers of this new mixed metal fashion in the Japanese taste were undoubtedly Tiffany & Co. and their main competitor, Gorham Mfg. Co. Their skilled craftsmen borrowed design inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints using robed figures, dragons, birds, crabs, fish, insects, flowering prunus branches, and other elements from nature to create fresh new objects for their clients. Their designers also took inspiration from Japanese artisans using a variety of different textures on the same object, often leaving the hammered surface of the object deliberately "unfinished", a look traditional silversmiths never contemplated. The notion that a hammered surface should suggest that a piece was handmade took hold later during the Arts and Crafts period and by the early 1900s hammered surfaces became almost commonplace.
For one year only in 1883, Gorham experimented with a line they called Banko Iron Ware which used a rough textured iron body patinated in a deep red-brown and applied with silver and/or copper dragons, figures, and natural elements seen on their other lines of mixed metalwork.
Few pieces of Banko Iron Ware appear in the marketplace due to the limited production and rarity. A small number were included in an exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in 2019 Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance 1859-1970, curated by Elizabeth Williams. Doyle sold another Gorham Banko Ware vase in October 2019 that was baluster-form decorated with a writhing dragon. The current example with it's sleek cylinddrical form more closely mirrors works by Japanese artisans, yet is clearly a Western creation.
We are thankful to Elizabeth Williams for information provided to Doyle for cataloging purposes.
C
Additional Notes & Condition Report
Any condition statement is given as a courtesy to a client, is an opinion and should not be treated as a statement of fact and Doyle New York shall have no responsibility for any error or omission. Please contact the specialist department to request further information or additional images that may be available.
No condition report? Click here to request one.