Filigreed

Dressed in filigreed art deco daffodils, 
dainty and tucked among tailored leaves 
held proudly -- almost defensively. 
Elegant and demure; 
your shapely neck flares with grace. 

You are such a small and lovely thing: 
light as a feather and yet 
you carry the weight 
of an American woman’s silver-plated dreams. 

Like her, you were designed to be admired --
fashioned to be lifted lightly. 
Pretty and proper at the table and
placed just so. 

Comfortable in your simple life of service.
Polished until your delicate silver skin 
wore thin and the honest truth 
of your copper heart could be revealed. 

---

One day, a tarnished silver-plated spoon rose up from the jumble of my mother’s silver cutlery collection. The base was round and filigreed, with an uncommon shape and a unique elegance of its own. As I polished it, I noticed, on the back of the narrow handle, the words Community Plate.

It was older than the more delicate Birks pattern my mother had collected and I wondered how it had come to be among her possessions. Was it originally part of a complete set that somehow became separated from the others? Maybe brought as part of a pot-luck afternoon bridge party and then left behind? Or was it purchased separately and given as a gift?

In any event, it had been passed on from my grandmother to my mother and then to me where it lay forgotten and unnoticed among the other cutlery. I knew I would probably never find out the exact path it had travelled to arrive in my hand at that moment, but there was something mysterious about it that called to me.

An online image search revealed that it came from a line of silver-plated flatware called Rendezvous or Old South, released in 1938 by the Oneida Company, just before World War Two began. “Community Plate” was an affordable silver-plated line of cutlery that had been produced by Oneida for many years. Oneida was known for its lavish full page advertisements in publications such as “Good Housekeeping” and “Better Homes and Gardens” that spoke to the American woman’s dream of an elegant and romantic and traditional colonial lifestyle.

As I explored further, I also uncovered the intriguing story of the Oneida Community which was originally founded in the 1840s by John Humphrey Noyes, a would-be preacher who created his own brand of religion based on ideas such as the concept of “spiritual spouses” which evolved into “spiritual polyamory.” Noyes founded a commune on Oneida Creek in New York State where everyone lived together and devoted their affections equally to all members.

Their communal child care system allowed all members to take part in various activities that sustained operations such as manufacturing animal traps, chains and silk items, and they pioneered the technique of silver-plating flatware. Oneida eventually gained a reputation for quality products which has been sustained to this day and although as might be expected, the community eventually fell apart, the manufacturing business continued and was eventually transformed into a joint stock company, owned and operated by former members and still known for its fair labour practices.

Who would have expected that a company named after a long standing Indigenous tribe and that grew from a 19th century polyamorous communist Christian Utopia would eventually produce a brand of flatware that encouraged women to aspire to colonial ideals and traditional gender roles?

---

This piece was published in the Feminism and Religion Blog, November 1, 2024.

For more on this interesting story, check out Lisa Hix’s, article The Polyamorous Christian Socialist Utopia that made Silverware for Proper Americans.

^{Cover image: Diane Perazzo}