Gothic motifs, rediscovered and reinterpreted during the mid-eighteenth century, had evolved in a new, romanticized style by the 1840s. Although rarely adapted to silver, it found one of its most beguiling expressions in William Gale and Nathaniel Hayden’s pattern Gothic, patented in 1847. Gale was a great innovator, in 1826 patenting a process by which a silver blank was run through a roller die, emerging as a piece of flatware complete with decoration on both sides.

Technical notes: The handle is double struck. 

Related examples: Howe and Warren 1975, pp. 70–71, no. 143; Ward and Ward 1979, p. 172, no. 180; Venable 1994, pp. 56–57.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.