Members

William Chawner II’s son-in-law who took over Chawner & Co. with his mother-in-law Mary Chawner. He took over the firm and registered his first mark in 1840. He was an exhibitor at the 1851 Great Exhibition and the company became one of the largest producers of quality silver flatware in Victorian England.

Frederick Archer was an Englishman who apprenticed as a bullion dealer and silversmith. He moved on to work as a sculptor creating busts of well known people. In 1847 he began using photography as an aid for this work. He was unsatisfied with the calotype process and the paper negative. In 1849 he made a breakthrough when he coated a glass plate with a collodion solution and exposed the plate while…

David Austin Sayre (March 12, 1793 - September, 1870) was a prominent silversmith, banker and educator. Sayre is best remembered as founder of Sayre Female Institute.

The most famous woman silversmith, Bateman was the widow of John Bateman. After his death in 1760, she took over his London-based metalwork business and transformed it into one of the most successful and prolific silversmithing workshops in London. Hester and her sons were known for their bright-cut engraving, thin-line beading and piercing.

Richard Beard was an entrepreneur who profitably established himself in the coal trade in London. With his entrepreneurial spirit, in 1841’ he paid Louis Daguerre 150 pounds for a license to use his technology. He set up photography as a business speculation and opened the world's first photographic studio. It was set up in a glasshouse on the roof of London's Royal Polytechnic Institution to provide…

Throughout his 48-year career, Ross Beaty has been a leader in the international mining and renewable energy industries, making a significant and lasting impact in BC and around the world. After graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1979 in geology and law, Ross began a geological contracting company, Beaty Geological, which he operated from 1980 through 1987. In 1985, Ross established…

Charles Bennett was an English photographic pioneer. He improved the gelatine silver process developed by Richard Leach Maddox. In 1873 he created a method of hardening the emulsion, making it more resistant to friction, and larger. In 1878 he discovered that by prolonged heating the sensitivity of the emulsion could be greatly increased. This increased sensitivity enabling shooting at 1/25 second,…

Robert Bingham was an English pioneer photographer, mainly active in France, making portraits and reproductions of paintings. He had a background in chemistry and was particularly interested in photographic processes and published a treatise on this subject in 1848. He later became the first writer to outline the possible use of collodion in photographs and the self-proclaimed 'Inventeur du procédé…

Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard was a cloth merchant from Lille, France who learned the calotype process from his druggist, a student of the inventor of the calotype, William Henry Fox Talbot. He developed a method of bathing the paper in solutions of potassium iodide and silver nitrate rather than brushing the chemical baths on the surface. In 1850 Blanquart-Evrard published the Albumen Print also…

John Mackay, James Fair, James Flood, William O'Brien In 1871, Irish-Americans John William Mackay, James Graham Fair, James Clair Flood and William S. O'Brien, organized the Consolidated Virginia Silver Mine near Virginia City, Nevada, from a number of smaller claims on the Comstock Lode and later added the nearby California mine. Mackay and Fair had the mining knowledge and Flood and O'Brien raised…

Founded in 1919 when Mario Buccellati took over Milan’s Beltrami & Beltrami, Buccellati is known for its richly textured pieces that are influenced by Renaissance motifs and nature. He was the first famous for the technique of texture-engraving where pieces look like silk, damask, tulle, lace, or linen. Use of mixed metals and unusual gemstones is also typical. Buccellati quickly gained international…

Flatware-making is one of the sub-specialties of silversmithing.  In the 18th and 19th century the vast majority of spoons and forks were made by specialist “spoon makers” (knives were made by an entirely different tradesman called a cutler). The Chawner family was one of England’s dominant producers of silver flatware in the 19th century. William Chawner II began a seven-year spoon-making apprenticeship…

Charles Christofle founded the company that bears his name in 1830. Originally a jeweler, he bought the patents silver plating and electrolytic gilding of gold in 1842. As a goldsmith, he transformed ceremonial items and everyday objects: from jewelry to cutlery, gold smithery to sculptures, and decorative objects to tableware. This is how silver came to be an integral player in art of living today. Charles…

Maison Christofle officially opened as a jeweller in Paris in 1830 as a partnership between Charles Christofle and his brother-in-law, Joseph Albert Bouilhet. In 1840, Charles acquired the rights to electroplating. Traditional silver- and gold-plating methods were expensive and time consuming so this timed perfectly with the French bourgeoisie’s hunger for the luxuries already enjoyed by the aristocracy.…

Antoine Claudet was a French businessman who moved to London to open a glass warehouse. The daguerreotype process quickly attracted his interest and he returned to Paris to be taught its fundamentals by the creator himself, Louis-Jacques Daguerre.  Returning to England, with an operating license, he focused on creating and selling daguerreotypes. He was able to speed up the daguerreotype exposure…

Henry Tompkins (or Thomas) Paige Comstock (1820—1870) was an Canadian miner after whom the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada was named. The Comstock Lode was the richest silver mine in American history. Referred to by history books variously as a "sanctimonious gaffer", an "illiterate prospector", and a "quick-thinking loudmouth", he was known by his contemporaries as "Old Pancake", because…

Louis Daguerre, was a French painter and physicist who invented the first practical process of photography, known as the daguerreotype. The first permanent photograph from nature was made in 1826/27 by Nicéphore Niépce but it was of poor quality and required eight hours exposure time. Niépce partnered with Daguerre in his research but died before Daguerre developed his process which required only…

Marcus Daly (December 5, 1841 – November 12, 1900) was an Irish-born American businessman known as one of the three "Copper Kings" of Butte, Montana, United States. Prior to his copper career, Daly gained experience in the silver mines of the Comstock mines under the direction of John William Mackay and James G. Fair. While working there he met and befriended George Hearst and Lloyd Tevis, co-owners…

Hank Day (1902-1985) was born in in Spokane, Washington, to Helen Dwyer and Harry Lawrence Day, and grew up in Burke, Idaho, site of the great Hercules mine. In 1905, the family moved to Wallace, Idaho where he remained with the exceptions of when he attended the University of California where, in 1923, he graduated in Mining Engineering. The following year he did post graduate studies in economic…

Paul de Lamerie (9 April 1688 – 1 August 1751) was a London-based silversmith. The Victoria and Albert Museum describes him as the "greatest silversmith working in England in the 18th century". Though his mark raises the market value of silver, his output was large and not all his pieces are outstanding. The volume of work bearing de Lamerie's mark makes it almost certain that he subcontracted orders…

Bartolomé de Medina was a successful Spanish merchant who became fascinated with the problem of decreasing silver yields from ores mined in Spanish America. By the mid-sixteenth century, it was well known in Spain that American silver production was in decline due to the depletion of high-grade ores and increasing production costs. The New Laws, prohibiting the enslavement of Indians, had resulted…

The Dow of Dow-Jones is Charles Henry Dow, born Nov. 5, 1851, in Connecticut. He went into journalism, working for New England newspapers. His work impressed Charles Danielson, editor of the Providence (R.I.) Journal, and so in 1879 he assigned Dow to join a group of bankers and reporters who were going west to examine the silver mines of Leadville. After a four-day train trip, Dow wrote nine “Leadville…

George Eastman was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company. His invention of the Kodak camera, a name he coined, was a major reason for making photography accessible to the public. In 1878, when he was 24  he bought a photographic outfit with all the paraphernalia of the wet plate days.The camera was like a big box. He carried a tent so he could spread photographic emulsion…

"I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion …."--Thomas A. Edison, 1888 Edison, an incredible creator, patented 1,093 inventions. These included the phonograph, the kinetograph (a motion picture camera), and the Kinetoscope (a peep-hole motion picture viewer). Motion pictures became…

Brothers George Richards and Henry started G. R. Elkington & Co in the 1830s. The firm then operated independently as Elkington & Co. for over 100 years. In 1840 Elkington & Co. patented the electrolytic process for silver plating that is still in use today and they expanded at an incredible rate. By 1865 Elkington had over 1000 employees. Elkington & Co employed top designers and won…

Charles W. Engelhard Jr. (February 15, 1917 – March 2, 1971 was an American businessman who controlled an international mining and metals conglomerate, as well as a major owner in Thoroughbred horse racing. Engelhard made his fortune in the precious metals industry, where he operated a company dealing in platinum, gold, and silver founded by his German American father, Charles W Engelhard Sr.…

William Bell Frue, emigrated, at a young age, from Ireland to the United States. His mining career began in 1853 when he worked for the Pewabic copper mine in Michigan. With the discovery of the rich silver deposit on Silver Islet in the Canadian waters of Lake Superior, he was hired by the American, Alexander Sibley, who purchased the mine site from the Montreal Mining Company and formed the Silver…

Originally founded in 1735 by royal silversmith George Wickes, the firm was eventually taken over by Robert Garrard in partnership with John Wakelin in 1792. Garrard had many aristocratic patrons and was represented at numerous international exhibitions including the Great Exhibition of 1851. Garrard was the Crown Jeweller for six successive monarchs from 1843 to 2007. Their commissions have included…

Juan Godoy (1801-1842) was a Chilean prospector and woodcutter who in 1832 discovered an outcrop (reventón) of silver 50 km south of Copiapó in Chañarcillo. This event sparkled the Chilean silver rush. He successfully claimed the discovered outcrop in his name and the name of José Godoy and Manuel Gallo. The finding attracted thousands of people to the place and generated significant wealth. The…

Established in 1831 in Rhode Island, as a coin-silver flatware and jewelery manufacturer, Gorham eventually became one of the largest silversmiths in the world. By the late 1860s, they grossed $1 million in sales per year. Gorham was tremendously successful with flatware patterns like Chantilly, patented in 1895 and it remains one of the most popular flatware patterns today. Their crowning achievement…

The Spanish conquest of South America led to the discovery of Peruvian mountains rich in gold and silver. In April, 1545, high up in the Andes, an Indian named Diego Gualapa climbed a distinctively shaped conical peak in search of a rumoured Indian shrine. Such shrines frequently contained some gold or silver relics suitable for plunder. The peak was located at an altitude of 4,824 metres (15,287 ft.)…

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Daniel Guggenheim was sent to Switzerland as a young man to study the Swiss lace and embroidery business, and to serve as a buyer for his father's import firm. The discovery of high-grade silver-lead ore in the Guggenheim mines in Leadville, Colorado in 1881 became the foundation for the Guggenheim fortune in mining. In 1884, Daniel returned to the US to help manage…

Meyer Guggenheim was born in Lengnau, Aargau, Switzerland on February 1, 1828. He was of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry and emigrated to the United States in 1847. He started out in the importing business, but made his and his family's fortune (which was one of the largest fortunes of the 19th century) in mining and smelting. Guggenheim invested in silver mines of the Leadville mining district of Colorado.…

Born in Vermont, Hayward moved to Canton, New York early in his life. He studied law in New York, but also pursued lumber and lead mining interests. His experience in Michigan vein mining proved invaluable after his move to California in the Gold Rush of 1850. After buying an interest in the Eureka Mine in Amador County, Hayward made new investments and successfully extracted gold where others had…

George Hearst, of Scots-Irish origin, was born near present-day Sullivan, Missouri, to William G. Hearst and Elizabeth Collins. Hearst was raised in a log cabin on his family's farm in rural Franklin County. His father operated three small farms, all of which were mortgaged, with slave labor. William Hearst sold his products in his own local general store. George Hearst grew up before public education…

Birks was by far the largest and most influential Canadian silversmith in the 20th century. Henry Birks & Company was established in Montreal in 1879 as a retail jeweler. It became Henry Birks & Sons in 1893 when his three sons joined the business. In 1897 Birks bought out Hendery & Leslie, their largest supplier of silverware, and began manufacturing their own products. Birks manufactured…

Tom Herbert was a French-Canadian working on the railroad being pushed through northern Ontario in the early 1900s. He discovered a vein in the face of a cliff and prevailed on the geologist William Miller to examine it. Miller, Ontario's first government geologist, was in the area looking into the discoveries of James McKinley and Alfred Larose. Miller reported:...“silver was lying in profusion…

Sir John Herschel was a scientist and astronomer, like his father, Sir William Herschel, who discovered Uranus. He floundered in his early schooling before focusing on math and at the youthful age of 21 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London. He worked on a variety of projects including carrying on his father’s astronomical work studying the heavens with powerful telescopes. As…

A manufacturing firm, retail jewellers and silversmiths founded by Paul Storr in 1819 as Storr & Co. John Samuel Hunt, who had assisted Storr from the start, continued as a partner until his death in 1865 when he was succeeded by his son, John Hunt. Robert Roskell joined in 1844 and remained in the firm until his death in 1888. Hunt & Roskell were silversmiths and jewellers to Queen Victoria.

Silver Thursday was an event that occurred in the United States silver commodity markets on Thursday, March 27, 1980, following the attempt by brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt, William Herbert Hunt and Lamar Hunt to corner the silver market. A subsequent steep fall in silver prices led to panic on commodity and futures exchanges. Background Nelson Bunker Hunt, Lamar Hunt, and William Herbert Hunt, the sons…

Judas Iscariot (/ˈdʒuːdəs ɪˈskærɪət/; Biblical Hebrew: יהודה איש-קריות‎, romanized: Yehûdâh Ish-Kerayot; Greek: Ὶούδας Ὶσκαριώτης) (died c. 30 – c. 33 AD) was a disciple and one of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. According to all four canonical gospels, Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane by kissing him and…

Born in 1866, Jensen was the son of a knife grinder in the town of Raadvad just to the north of Copenhagen. Jensen began his training in goldsmithing at the age of 14 in Copenhagen. His apprenticeship with the firm Guldsmed Andersen, ended in 1884, and this freed Georg to follow his artistic interests. In 1884 he became a journeyman and in 1887 he enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts,…

In 1526 Tarnowskie Góry in Silesia (southern Poland) was awarded the status of a free mining town, and in 1528, John II the Good, Duke of Opole, issued an ordinance known as the Ordunek Górny, granting the town a series of mining privileges. At the same time a mining authority was also established, its seal and coat-of-arms eventually becoming the town’s coat-of-arms. The Reformation found many…

John Johnson was born at Saco, Maine, U.S.A. in 1813.   He was brought up in New Hampshire and, for a time, worked as an assistant to a jeweller and watchmaker in New York. He formed a business partnership with Alexander Simon Wolcott (1804 -1844), a New York instrument maker. 1839 was the year that Louis Daguerre, of France, in efforts to finance his developments, went public with his photographic…

In 1526 Kamiya Jutei, a wealthy merchant from Hakata, founded the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine in Ōda. In 1533 he introduced a Korean method of silver refining to the mine, which became the Hai-Fuki-Ho method. Historians compared the Hai-Fuki-Ho method to the Medieval European seigerprozess [de] of silver smelting. Under the Hai-Fuki-Ho method, silver-containing copper ore would be cast-smelted with lead,…

Credited with the discovery of several sizeable lead-zinc-silver deposits in Yukon, most notably the renowned Faro deposit, Alan Kulan was a compassionate and pioneering prospector with an independent, entrepreneurial spirit. His successes spawned other ventures such as prospecting syndicates and exploration companies that discovered other notable deposits and significant mineral occurrences and in…

November 26, 1848, marks a major day in the history of photography as American Edward Land  introduced his Model 95 camera which produced sepia-coloured prints in about one minute. It was the achievement of his efforts between 1943 and 1947 to create self-developing photography. Land called his company Polaroid: Polar, taken from the root of polarizer, and odium, which means to resemble. The camera…

Alfred LaRose, was a blacksmith working as a contractor on the railway being pushed through northern Ontario near Mile 103. About two weeks after Alfred McKinley and Ernest Darragh had made their discovery, LaRose noticed erythrite (red cobalt/cobalt bloom) along the tracks. LaRose noted "One evening I found a float, a piece as big as my hand, with little sharp points all over it. I say nothing but…

Louis Aimé, who was born in Metz, France, studied chemistry and physics at university and then worked as a photographer and painter. By the 1880s he was one of many inventors trying to master the technology for what would become film. Le Prince's first camera had 16 lenses, which took "sequential photographs". He then moved on and used a single lens camera to film short sequences of people and carriages,…

Inducted into the Silver Hall of Fame in 2017 Mr Lomelín spent 36 years at Peñoles where he served as Group Vice President of the metals and chemicals division for four years and subsequently held the position as CEO for 21 years. He brings to the board an invaluable wealth of senior operational experience in the fields of mining and engineering. Following a career in metals and mining, Mr Lomelín…

Inducted into the Silver Hall of Fame in 2017 Mr. Luna is currently (2017) Director, President and CEO of Rochester Resources Ltd., a junior natural resources company. Mr. Luna recently joined the board of DynaResource, Inc. which has appointed him as special advisor to the president of its wholly owned Mexican subsidiary. Mr. Luna was Chairman of the Company from October 2004 to May 2009 (and was…

Richard Maddox was an English photographer and physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. Dry plate is a glass plate coated with a gelatin emulsion of silver bromide. It can be stored until exposure, and after exposure it can be brought back to a darkroom for development at leisure. The advantages of the dry plate were obvious: photographers could use commercial…

In 1775, teenager Jonathan Mappin started a small cutlery workshop in Sheffield. Within a year the first Mappin hallmark was recorded at the assay office. But it was under his four great-grandsons who incorporated the business as Mappin Brothers Ltd in the middle of the 19th century. In 1963 Mappin & Webb amalgamated with British Silverware Ltd together with Elkington & Co Ltd and Walker &…

Peter Mawdsley invented the first photographic paper, the silver gelatin print, in 1873. It was the first photographic process that submerged exposed paper into chemicals, rather than using light, as the chief agent in developing an image. Due to its stability and ease of use, developing-out paper became the photographic process of choice and dominated the twentieth century in terms of amateur and…

Elizabeth “Baby Doe” McCourt Tabor: Colorado’s Silver Queen Elizabeth McCourt Tabor (1854 – March 7, 1935), better known as Baby Doe, was the second wife of pioneer Colorado businessman Horace Tabor. Her rags-to-riches and back to rags again story made her a well-known figure in her own day, and inspired an opera and a Hollywood movie based on her life. Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, she moved…

James H. McKinley and Ernest J. Darragh were contractors providing lumber for a railway being pushed north through the thick Ontario bush. On August 7, 1903 the two partners were walking the right of way scouting for trees suitable for railway ties. As they passed through a rock cut on the banks of Long Lake (now called Cobalt Lake), south of Haileybury, their curiosity was aroused by a pink stain.…

Dr. Willet G. Miller, a world-renowned geologist, had an enormous influence on the scientific advancement and mineral development of Canada, and particularly Ontario, in the early decades of the 20th century. His memory has been perpetuated by such practical tokens as a bronze plaque on a cairn at Cobalt, Miller Hall at Queen's University, and the Willet G. Miller Medal of the Royal Society of Canada.…

Nathaniel Mills & Sons were 19th century Birmingham silversmiths who excelled in making silver boxes, snuff boxes and visiting card cases. Nathaniel Mills, the Elder, was a partner in Mills & Langston, Northwood Jewelers when he registered his first mark in 1803. In 1825, he registered his well-known now punch mark 'N.M' within a rectangle at the Birmingham Assay Office and concentrated on…

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, is credited as the inventor of photography. He was a French inventor, who first gained fame, with his older brother Claude Niépce, for their invention of the internal combustion engine. When lithography began advancing he experimented with this new printing technique. He coated pewter with light-sensitive substances in an effort to copy superimposed engravings in sunlight.…

Burglar to the Stars Blane Nordahl is a unique American cat burglar - a person who is adept at entering and leaving the burglarized place without attracting notice. He became a specialized cat burglar, a Silver Cat Burglar. His burglaries focussed on items that were valuable including a stein that belonged to King George II and a silver set that silversmith Paul Revere made. His nickname “Burglar…

Daniel O'Connor (31 January 1864 – 30 March 1933) was a Canadian politician, businessman and prospector from Pembroke, Ontario. In the late 1880s, O'Connor moved to Sudbury where he became associated with economy, life and industry, becoming the town's second mayor in 1894.  Inn and Ronnoco Hotel. When O'Connor moved to Temagami, he was hoping to find some mineral prospects.  In 1899, O'Connor…

The House of Odiot was founded in 1690 by Jean-Baptiste Gaspard Odiot but rose to prominence under Jean-Baptiste Claude, Gaspard’s grandson. Jean-Baptiste Claude was influenced by classical Greek and Egyptian motifs as expressed in the Directoire and Empire styles.Odiot purchased many of Henry Auguste’s models and designs following the 1809 bankruptcy of the neoclassical silversmith. Along with…

The Nasa (Nasafjäll) silver mine (Swedish: Nasa silvergruva), located on Nasa Mountain on the border between Sweden and Norway, was used for mining silver, mainly from 1635 to 1659 and from 1770 to 1810. Smelting occurred during the first period (1635-1659) at Skellefteälven; during the second period (1770-1810) at Adolfström in Arjeplog . History During First Phase It was an indigenous Sami man…

According to his family history, Carl Poul Petersen apprenticed at Georg Jensen in Denmark before emigrating to Canada in 1929. He worked at Henry Birks and Sons in Montreal but he also set up a studio for commission work in the late thirties. Petersen left Birks and opened his permanent studio in 1944 and registered his company, C.P. Petersen & Sons two years later. Unlike Birks, Petersen’s…

Jean Puiforcat served in WW1. After the war, he apprenticed as a silversmith and a designer. He lived in Paris. He designed in the art deco style. His silver work had smooth surfaces and was based on the geometric series. Ivory, onyx, lapis lazuli and rosewood were used to decorate pieces. He also used gilding. Puiforcat left Paris and moved to Saint Jean de-Luz, around 1927. He worked briefly in Havana,…

Founded in Paris in 1820 by Louis-Victor and Emile Puiforcat and their cousin, Puiforcat rose to fame as one of the great French silversmiths. The Puiforcat collection features outstanding designs ranging from classical through Art Deco to modern design. Many of the works were recreated from Louis-Victor’s own 18th-century collection of hollowware and flatware pieces. It was Jean E. Puiforcat, however,…

Inducted into the Silver Hall of Fame in 2017 Robert A. Quartermain has extensive global experience in geology, exploration and development. Over his 40-year career in the resource industry, he has established a solid track record in building shareholder value in the field of precious metals exploration and development. Dr. Quartermain was the president of Silver Standard Resource Inc. from 1985 to…

Paul Revere (December 21, 1734 – May 10, 1818]) was an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and Patriot in the American Revolution. He is best known for his midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in April, 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride" (1861). At age…

Hennell of Bond Street is one of London’s oldest silversmiths and jewellers. It was founded by David Hennell and originally made fashionable silverware for the nobility and landed gentry. David’s son, Robert I, is known for his fine neoclassical silver, often with bright cut engraving. His son, grandson and great-grandson (Roberts all) carried on the business throughout the 19th century.

Wihelm Rontgen was a German physicist who was the first person to systematically produce and detect electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays or Röntgen rays. His discovery of X-rays was a great revolution in the fields of physics and medicine and electrified the general public. He named it X-radiation to signify an unknown type of radiation. His discovery earned him the…

Sani played an important role in the history of Navajo silversmithing. He is known by many to be the first Navajo silversmith, although his main focus was in blacksmithing; working with iron. Many agree that he learned silversmithing in the year 1853. According to Navajo tribal leader, Chee Dodge, Sani must have learned to work iron around the age of 25. Dodge knew Sani personally. In fact, he used…

Paul Sarnoff was, in addition to being a career commodities trader, a prolific writer. His 30-some titles include “Silver Bulls: The Great Silver Boom and Bust,” covering the seven months leading up to the rise and fall of silver during 1979 and 1980. It is a constructive and contrarian narrative, placing blame not on the infamous Hunt brothers but instead on the claque of short-traders who, with…

Edward Lawrence Schieffelin (1847–1897) was an Indian scout and prospector who discovered silver in the Arizona Territory, which led to the founding of Tombstone, Arizona. He partnered with his brother Al and mining engineer Richard Gird in a handshake deal that produced millions of dollars in wealth for all three men. During the course of Tombstone's mining history, about US $85,000,000 in silver…

Johann Schulze was a German physician and anatomy professor who made a significant discovery in the development of photography when he observed that silver salts darkened when exposed to sunlight. In 1725, while attempting to create a phosphorescent material by combining a slurry of chalk with nitric acid containing dissolved silver, he noticed that sunlight, and not heat, turned the substance black.…

Sequoyah (ᏍᏏᏉᏯ Ssiquoya, as he signed his name, or ᏎᏉᏯ Se-quo-ya, as is often spelled in Cherokee; named in English George Gist or George Guess) (c.1770–1843), was an American and Cherokee polymath. In 1821 he completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible. This was one of the very few times in recorded history that a member…

Giovanni Battista Serpieri was the first foreign ‘mega-entrepreneur’ to invest in Greece. He was demonized almost immediately after he had invested fifteen million drachmas to gain the concession to re-open the Lavrion Mines, the same mines that had made ancient Athens an economic powerhouse. Led by Epaminondas Deligiorgis the opposition in the Greek parliament raised questions about the legality…

Tommy Singer (born 1940; death May 31, 2014) was a Navajo silversmith who specialized in chip-inlay jewelry. He died in a motorcycle accident on May 31, 2014. His inlaid turquoise, coral, and silver pieces incorporated traditional Navajo designs. Singer gained acclaim as the originator of the chip inlay design which he developed in the 1970s. Singer was a member of the Navajo Nation from Winslow, Arizona.…

Antonio Siraumea, a Yaqui, was likely a resident of the rancheria Arizonac, a real, or small mining camp at the edge of the northern frontier of the Spanish colonies of New Spain. In October 1736, Siraumea found what appeared to be a number of massive pieces of native silver that were eventually determined to weigh in excess of two tons. This discovery, known as the planchas or bolas de plata brought…

William Morris Stewart (August 9, 1827 – April 23, 1909) was an American lawyer and politician. In 1964, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Personal Stewart was born in Wayne County, New York, on August 9, 1825. As a child he moved with his parents to Trumbull County, Ohio. As a young man he was a mathematics teacher in Ohio. In…

Paul Storr was England's most celebrated silversmith during the first half of the nineteenth century. His pieces historically, and currently, adorn royal palaces and the finest stately homes throughout Europe and the world. Storr's reputation rests on his mastery of the grandiose neo-Classical style developed in the Regency period. He quickly became the most prominent silversmith of the nineteenth…

Thomas Sutton, who was born in Kensington, London, studied architecture before earring a Bachelor of Arts degree from Caius College in Cambridge. Photography first entered his life in 1841 when he posed for a daguerreotype portrait in Antoine Claudet’s studio. In 1855 he set up a photographic company in Jersey with business partner Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard that produced prints from calotype…

As the first woman in the California Gulch district, Augusta Louise Tabor, fondly remembered as “The First Lady of Leadville,” spent much of her life in helping make Leadville a great mining camp. She was born in Maine and, in 1857, married the now famous mining magnate, Horace Tabor, who was then a stone mason.  The Tabors heard rumors of gold strikes near Pike’s Peak and in 1859 headed for…

Horace Tabor’s life story is a testament to hard work but also a great anecdote about short-sightedness. From a simple stone-cutter, he would grow to become one of the country’s wealthiest men, only to lose his riches after spending lavishly and investing poorly. Born in Vermont in 1830, Horace Tabor and his wife, Augusta, moved to Leadville in 1850, where he mined California Gulch and she ran…

Henry Talbot was an English polymath - a person whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects. His interest in photography led him to invent the salted paper and calotype process, also called talbotye, in the 1830s. In this technique, a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura. A camera obscura is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side…

America’s most famous silversmith from the mid 19th to early 20th century. The company began in 1837 when Charles Lewis Tiffany and John Young opened Tiffany & Young. In 1851, Tiffany became the first American firm to introduce the .925 English Sterling Standard in American-made silver. The name changed to Tiffany & Company in 1853 when Charles Tiffany took over management. Renowned American…

Noah Anthony Timmins (March 31, 1867 – January 22, 1936) was a Canadian mining financier and developer who is now counted among the founding fathers of Canada's mining industry. Noah Timmins partnered with his older brother Henry in 1903 to buy into the La Rose silver claim in Cobalt, Ontario at the onset of the Cobalt silver rush. Fred La Rose, a blacksmith, while working for brothers Duncan and…

Thomas Wedgwood, a son of Josiah Wedgwood of pottery fame, was an English inventor. He is the first person known to have created impermanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. His practical experiments yielded only shadow image photograms that were not light-fast, but his conceptual breakthrough and partial success have led some historians to call…

Alexander Wolcott was an American experimental photographer, inventor, and maker of medical supplies and optical instruments. In 1839 he met John Johnson, a jeweller and watchmakers assistant. 1939 was also the year that Louis Daguerre, of France, in efforts to finance his developments, went public with his photographic process - the daguerreotype. Johnson was able to get the specifications and he…

Johann Zahn, was inducted into the Silver Hall of Fame, not for his use of silver, but for his studies related to light and his interests in the production of the camera obscura, (latin for dark chamber.) Zahn, a German priest, was the author of Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium. This book has many illustrations and sketches of both the camera obscura and magic lantern, along with…