In 1801 Thomas Bruff of Chestertown, Maryland, received the first American patent for manufacturing spoons. His advertisements claimed that his machine “with one impression and one hand to work it, will turn out from a flat bar, a spoon in a minute, ready for the punch, with the heel and name impressed upon it.” John Adam, a contemporary, remarked that using Bruff’s invention, he could turn out twenty-five spoons in the time that it previously took to produce one. With improved production methods, American silver manufacturers, such as Nicholas Geffroy, began to supply flatware to a greater spectrum of consumers.

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.