- [Announcer] Funding for "Chasing Silver: The Story of Gorham" has been provided in part by.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Our story began 70 years ago.

For decades, our fine jewelry has been curated from around the globe.

At Ross-Simons, we believe that every piece of our jewelry can be part of your story.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] With the horrors of World War I behind them, Americans embraced new priorities and a devil-may-care attitude as they entered the Roaring Twenties.

(upbeat music continues) For the Gorham Manufacturing Company, however, business was anything but roaring.

World War I had burdened them with unprofitable contracts and non-collectable debt.

To make matters worse, the company's visionary leader, Edward Holbrook, died, leading the company in a tailspin.

- Gorham went bankrupt in 1921.

They don't make a great point of it, but it was costing them more to do things than they were acknowledging.

- [Narrator] To add fuel to Gorham's financial fire, the Gilded Age that had fostered America's love of silver was long behind them, and after the war, the tastes and needs of society had changed.

- A civilian economy had to adjust.

It's like a plane in a storm trying to find its new equilibrium.

- [Narrator] An equilibrium that would prove to be elusive for Gorham.

At the dawn of a new decade, it was anyone's guess whether this titan of silver could ever claw its way back to the top.

(bright music) Between 1919 and 1923, the Gorham Manufacturing Company found itself led by a revolving door of presidents.

After three disastrous appointments, including Edward Holbrook's son, John Swift Holbrook, the president's seat sat empty while the board reorganized.

Finally, in 1925, there was a glimmer of hope when Edmund Mayo was elected president, bringing with him organizational changes that went against decades-old philosophies.

- Mayo had an interesting background.

He was 39, and he had developed some tooling to help make the metal helmets that the doughboys wore.

He was really more of a business executive than a silver person.

- Mayo brought in modern techniques and attitudes.

People who worked there said that he knew everybody, knew their names, knew their families, would go through the plant every day, really made them feel as if they were wanted.

- [Gerald] Mayo did not have the design capacity of, say, a Wilkinson, obviously, and in fact, he restructured the company to put the chief designers underneath the marketing department.

- They were less concerned with being an artistic innovator and more concerned with the bottom line.

And whenever a company goes in that direction, design is not going to be the motivating force.

- [Narrator] To add fuel to the design department's subordination, its new director, William Codman, Jr., was glaringly out of step with Mayo's pursuit of more modernist style.

Codman, Jr., who took the reins after his father retired, had his feet firmly planted in the classical tradition.

But Americans had begun to embrace the simplicity of Scandinavian design, and to keep up with changing tastes, Mayo hired Eric Magnussen, a well-known Danish silversmith working in Copenhagen.

- He had a reputation as being a very skillful and innovative silversmith, and Gorham talked him into coming to Providence, Rhode Island.

(mysterious music) - [Narrator] Magnussen began working at Gorham in 1925.

That same year, another World's Fair was being held in France to highlight the new Style Moderne, which later became known as Art Deco.

- The United States did not exhibit at that exhibition because the story was, we had no modernist work to show.

So Mayo decided that it would be advantageous for Gorham to have a modernist line.

It should be said that Magnussen worked completely independently of the design director, had his own studio.

The design director did not like his work at all, so it was kind of a forced marriage, (laughs) Gorham.

- [Narrator] If there was ever a celebrity designer at the company, it was Magnussen.

Aside from his own studio space and design team, Gorham also gave him the freedom to create modern designs and to stamp them with his own unique mark.

- If I could have one piece from the Gorham Collection, I would take Magnussen's Light and Shadows of Manhattan tea service.

Magnussen flew above New York city in an airplane.

1920s, not many people got the chance.

And he looks down, and he sees the city from above, and it's revelatory the way the light and the shadows are striking on the tall buildings.

And he makes a tea service that the plate looks kind of like the shape of Manhattan, and then he uses cubic surfaces so that you feel like you're looking at skyscrapers from above.

There was a critic for the "New York Times" who huffed that "he's cubed surfaces that you may not cube," which is not true, because, yeah, he cubed surfaces, but it's functional.

I mean, it holds liquid.

You can make your coffee and your tea and your creamer, and it's just marvelous.

Like Codman, he's kinda epitomizing the styles of art at the time, but unlike Codman, I think he's advancing them, because he's using them to show a view that nobody's really seen, and hinting at the future to come.

- They were trying to bring about a modern style of silver, similar to what was being sold in Europe, and was made popular during the 1925 Art Deco exhibit in Paris.

But Americans weren't ready for it.

They wanted their conservative, historically-based, and increasingly colonial-based-styled silver.

- [Narrator] Although critically acclaimed, it was clear that the cubic service was not commercially viable, so it was never put into production, remaining instead a one-of-a-kind work of art.

In the end, Magnussen's star shown brightly, but briefly.

He left the company less than five years after he was hired.

Magnussen was one of many immigrants in Gorham's workforce.

Prior to the 20th century, most of the company's recruits were skilled craftsmen from countries such as Britain, Germany, and France, but with the rising tide of immigrants from Southern Europe, Gorham's cultural melting pot began to expand.

- Paolo Tagliaferri was born in Guarcino, an hour and 20 minutes' drive from Rome, and he came to the United States at 14 years old with his dad.

Somewhere around 1920 or so, he was hired at Gorham Manufacturing Company as a hoisting engineer in the bronze foundry.

The heat must have been incredibly treacherous.

Oftentimes, my grandmother would talk about how he would come home and have the chills because his body was so warm from the exposure to the heat that it would almost feel as though when you come home from a sunburn.

- [Narrator] In his 40 years at Gorham, Paolo worked on many projects, including the eight-foot Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial, created in 1927.

- My grandfather only had great gratitude for his time there.

He said that he was treated so well, and there was a generous spirit among the supervisors of the company, and that he felt as though it was a family.

He was always grateful.

Even during the Depression, my grandfather worked part-time at the foundry, and there was always a gratitude of having a job, having that ability to bring everything back home to your household, food on the table, and all of those things.

- [Narrator] Many households were not as fortunate when the 1930s dealt the worst economic depression the world had ever seen.

For Gorham, it derailed all of the company's hard-won momentum.

- People stopped buying silver, and especially the people that were buying the very expensive custom work, stopped buying silver.

- Mayo said, "Okay, you know, we're fighting for our lives now."

This whole idea of trying to sell people on something new, he didn't feel like he could afford it.

So they just brought out their bestsellers, their Chantilly, their Buttercup, and they just reduced the number of patterns and the number of products to the most popular ones.

- What happens when they hit the Depression is that the middle class disappears, and they have to go into things like hotelware.

Now, the hotelware lines are really boring, but they keep the company alive during the Depression, which is really difficult to do.

- [Narrator] With the public struggling to afford food, nevermind luxury items, Gorham was forced to cut back on production and lay off workers.

This didn't stop them, however, from producing one notable commission in 1935.

- [Announcer] This was the fastest race on record, with the winner, Kelly Petillo, averaging 106 miles an hour.

- [Narrator] The Borg-Warner Trophy.

Created by Gorham at a cost of $10,000.

this 5'7" sterling silver trophy was presented to the winner of the Indianapolis 500.

Despite the prestige, the commission was a mere drop in Gorham's financial bucket, and the company limped through the 1930s.

(upbeat music) On April 30th, 1939, the New York World's Fair debuted with the intention of boosting morale and driving much-needed business to the city.

- If you looked at history, World's Fairs tend to take place during economic downturns, and they can be really seen as catalysts for improvement.

They don't always work, but they definitely try.

- [Narrator] Unlike previous expositions, Gorham didn't have its own lavish pavilion.

Instead, they hosted a tiny exhibit at the New York World's Fair, a fair that promised visitors a preview of things to come, a hopeful look into the world of tomorrow.

Less than six months after the fair opened, the world was turned upside down.

- [Newsreader] Six hours after Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, the Republic of France followed.

All France in a maelstrom of activity.

The Maginot Line has already opened fire on the Germans.

The sparring has ended.

World War II has begun.

(cannon shots booming) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Like Holbrook, Mayo used his experience and foresight to capitalize on wartime production and land government contracts.

(calm music) - They're making 36 different types of war products, a whole array of killing products that were coming out of a factory that in peacetime is making the civil silverware, or that silver cups that commemorate your birth, or your wedding silver, or what, and now they're making shell canisters to kill people with.

- It's not just out of patriotism that they're doing this war production work.

It's also, they need to survive in this war environment, and the only way to do that, because the use of metals, precious metals, is being restricted, is to participate in war production.

But they do it willingly, they do it wholeheartedly, and they win an award from the US Army for their war production work in World War II.

- [Narrator] The war impacted Gorham in many ways.

On one hand, lucrative government contracts gave the company much-needed economic stability.

On the other hand, these contracts forced Gorham to open its doors to labor unions, and now the unions were here to stay.

Aside from unionization, the war also affected Gorham's output.

Government restrictions on metals stopped all bronze and brass production, and drastically reduced the manufacture of silverwares.

- In peacetime, Gorham had employed about 1,200 civil workers, and by 1945, at the end of the war, only 160 of the firm's workers were employed making silverware.

So they come out of the Second World War, you still have the knowledge base intact, but much diminished from what it was prior to the Second World War.

- Because we were fighting a war on two fronts, both the Atlantic front and the Pacific front, and because all of the men were being drafted or volunteering willingly to go to battle, that meant that women really had to step up to the plate even more than they had in World War I.

So you see photographs of war production at Gorham where 90% of the workforce are women.

The men came home, and the women were like, "Bye, honey, go back and put your apron on and get back into the kitchen and have some kids."

(crowd cheering) (somber music) - When everybody came back from World War II, and the marriage boom happened, every bride wanted a Gorham tea set, but they couldn't afford the $3,000 sterling one, so they got the Gorham silver plate, Chantilly being the most famous one.

Everyone got one.

Now, remember one thing, Gorham had major competition at this point.

You know, Reed & Barton, Wallace, Towle.

There was major competition, but there was nothing like Gorham, because A, they had a headstart on everybody in terms of the ornamented silverware, B, they were quite an efficient operation.

Pre-importing, no one could touch what Gorham could make for the price.

- Gorham was filling a part of the market which was really about commemoration.

Whether that was commemoration of the birth of a baby or a civic accomplishment or a wedding or a wedding anniversary, that's really where their market was.

- For a time, it was the gift to give for weddings.

You had to have silver.

But in the 20th century, as more women entered the workforce, as lives were busy, who was home to polish the silver?

Silver tarnishes.

(soft, bright music) Stainless steel arrived in 1913, and was quickly turned into flatware.

That meant that the knife blades would not corrode, and that was a gift to many households who did not want to spend the time taking care of things.

As stainless really began to supplant silver, even silver plate fell out of favor.

- [Narrator] Although silver had become too high maintenance for many American households in the 1950s and '60s, it was still an impressive gift, steeped in tradition, particularly in the South.

- I grew up in Louisiana, and when you graduated from high school and you went off to college, you got flatware.

I have pieces of flatware from my high school.

You'd have a birthday, and they would give you a spoon or a fork or a knife.

Girls built up a dowry.

It was a very Southern thing.

- The South was the epitome for more formal entertaining, and the bridal market was extremely strong down there.

Women were still entertaining with sterling and beautiful china and crystal in their homes, and so their daughters were experiencing that as well.

- I was expected to know how to serve and set a table.

I mean, you learned the finer things.

And I think, if I went back now and visited, my classmates would still be serving with fine silver.

I think that some places in the South, it has stayed.

But it's heritage silver, not purchased.

And that's the sad thing.

(soft, bright music continues) - [Narrator] As the entertaining style of middle class America became less formal, Gorham created a wide range of silverwares for the modern household.

In 1960, they debuted a new hollowware line by an up-and-coming designer, Donald Colflesh.

Circa '70 sought to express the spirit of the future in sterling, largely inspired by space exploration and America's race to the Moon.

- It wasn't a commercial success because it was so expensive to make.

The design that Colflesh came up with is wonderful and beautiful, but it basically meant the pieces all had to be largely handmade.

- The fact that modern designs were introduced at Gorham in the '40s and '50s and '60s, but they weren't enormously successful despite their best efforts, it's probably because most brides were guided by a desire for traditional silver.

So it really didn't advance Gorham's case or anybody else's to propose these designs, 'cause they just didn't really meet the market.

- [Narrator] In an effort to better understand women's tastes in flatware, Gorham's biggest moneymaker, the company sent a research team on frequent trips around the country.

- The first month or so after I got to work, we got on a plane, and within three weeks, I had circled the entire country.

- [Narrator] The goal was to conduct as many surveys as possible at affluent high schools, colleges, and women's clubs.

- Our objective would be a 100 to 150 interviews a day, depending upon what we needed.

They were not to be told that we were coming from the Gorham Company because we would be doing basic research in the design.

As such, we carried with us a single fork from all the silverware manufacturers.

At that time, there were six of them in the United States, and we had their top patterns, along with ours.

However, mixed in with ours were new designs, brand-new designs.

And those forks would be backstamped so that if you picked it up and looked at it, you'd think, oh, well, they sell these, but it was just a one-of-a-kind.

By the time we got through the questionnaire, of course, the grand question of all was, if you could select a pattern today, which of these would you choose?

When we get back to the office, after we analyzed everything, with no computers, we decided that pattern number 565 had the most votes amongst all these other silver patterns who over the years have had years of advertising behind them, you see?

And that became the next pattern.

- One of the bestselling patterns at Gorham is Chantilly, designed about the turn of the century.

And it seemed like no matter how hard us young whippersnappers tried, we could never really beat out Chantilly.

It would always do well on surveys.

And it was our standard, as a point, that if you had an experimental design that outdid Chantilly, then it was really, you almost knew the dollar value in terms of how well that pattern would do on the market.

Were the old masters on our mind?

Continuously.

'Cause we would pull out drawers of their drawings.

Sometimes we'd pull out those drawers just to be inspired, and we'd be looking for some small element on this magnificent drawing that then we could use as a point of inspiration for a new flatwork pattern.

- I learned a lot on the surveys.

Different regions of the country, different tastes.

The Northeast was rather plain, not ornate.

Down South, complete opposite.

Midwest was sort of in between, it seemed to me.

Maybe hearts and flowers, but simplified, and not really ornate.

On the West Coast (laughs) they're different.

(soft, bright music) - [Narrator] As the 1960s ushered in radical change throughout the country, 1967 proved to be another watershed moment for Gorham.

- A lot of corporations in the United States, they wanted to diversify for a couple of reasons.

One was so they wouldn't run afoul of antitrust laws.

If you bought all in one area, then you might be told, in the 1960s, back when we used to regulate things, to break that up.

So they wanted to grow, but they couldn't really grow within their product area, so they look to diversify.

Diversification had some tax swap benefits, and it also provided a hedge against one end of your business not doing so well.

So there was a real merger-mania.

- [Narrator] Gorham's appeal lay in the fact that it was cash rich.

Its assets were valued higher than its stock price, making the company the perfect target for a hostile takeover.

- Evidently, some New York enterprising group wanted to buy Gorham, and the executives at Gorham really didn't want that to happen.

If anything, they wanted to be part of a local corporation.

So they went to Textron, and the old story is that, over the weekend, Textron and Gorham worked out a deal where, by Monday morning, Textron had acquired Gorham.

- It was a complete surprise, I think, to all the employees that it was being bought by Textron.

- Well, the takeover by Textron, which had been founded by Royal Little, in the 1930s and '40s, he went around New England, buying up textile factories that were going under.

He'd get the property for virtually nothing, sell the machinery, which was still good, even though it might be 100 years old, sell it overseas, where the jobs were now going, and then he built Textron out of that.

That's what Textron, did they bought and sold properties.

- He bought Bell Aerospace, which turned into Bell Helicopter.

Just when I joined, and shortly thereafter, we bought Bostitch, we bought Speidel, and we bought Gorham, obviously.

- [Narrator] Under Textron, Gorham began to diversify its product line into giftware and total tabletop, which included china and crystal, in addition to silver.

One enduring product from this era is Gorham's sterling silver snowflake series, originally conceived and designed by Richard Maiella, and produced annually since 1970.

- So my mom was a school teacher, and she was in the kitchen cutting out snowflakes to decorate her room, and my father said, "Oh, that would be a really good idea to do a sterling silver Christmas snowflake as a collector's item."

And then he went to his boss, and I think he pitched it, and he said, "Oh yeah, that'd be great.

Why don't you do that?"

And then he did, and it just took off.

He was lucky, he had a job that kept him sharp and creative, and he was able to make a living at it and be appreciated by a company that had done that for hundreds of artists.

(bright, mysterious music) - Up until I got there, I think there'd only been maybe six presidents throughout the history, from when it started.

And then, after Textron, we began to see quite a few presidents.

Different philosophies would come through.

- Textron would use the Gorham Company, I felt, as a training camp for their up-and-coming executives from the Textron office.

So what I mean by that is, Textron being a conglomerate, and they had companies that were making staples, Bostitch, and they had companies that were making golf carts, and other corporations.

And so they would take the executives from those companies, and in the process of moving them up through the hierarchy, sooner or later, one of them would become the president of the Gorham Company.

And so about every two years, Textron was changing the president of the Gorham Company.

Each time that would happen, that new president would bring in his own vice president, and the vice president would want to bring in his own sales manager, and such, and it was just a revolving door situation.

It seemed to take all the wind out of forward progression for Gorham.

There were just constant changes, and for the staff like myself, we always seemed to be having to prove ourselves and our worth all over again.

- Everybody calls it the Gorham-Textron merger, but actually, Textron was a white knight, and had that not happened, Gorham would've disappeared.

If I was the chairman of Textron, and I was looking at all these companies, absolutely, I would take some guy that was training, coming up in Textron, and hey.

As opposed to going out and trying to find somebody on the outside, this is on the inside.

Let's see how good a president he's gonna be with this company, maybe two or three years.

That was kind of the norm.

I reported to nine presidents in 14 years, and 11 vice presidents, so do the math.

When someone would come in and say, "I'm the new president," I'd say good luck, (laughs) because I knew it was gonna change pretty soon.

And some of 'em were great, like the Dick Ryans and the Charlie Chapins.

I thought they were fabulous.

There were some that were pretty good, and there were some that were terrible.

- [Narrator] Textron and Gorham's seemingly simpatico merger began to show strain as the 1970s progressed.

(people chattering) With changes at the top and disparities in pay, employees grew weary, so on September 13th, 1975, they took to the picket line, marking the beginning of the longest and most harrowing strike in Gorham's history.

- The 1975 strike really separated a lot of people.

Some people held a grudge for many, many years.

Both sides.

- Fred Roy, Sr. was one of the Gorham managers who crossed the picket line to keep production running.

He had started at the company after serving in World War II, and would eventually become Vice President of Manufacturing.

- He had a very large sympathy for the factory workers.

He did not like the disparity of managers that were making five times what some skilled worker was doing, or a die cutter or a toolmaker or somebody that contributed to the company.

And this man or woman came in fresh from college, and they're driving a brand-new car, and these guys were struggling to keep their families fed.

- [Narrator] Aside from wages and benefits, the union was struggling with a growing threat to American manufacturing, referred to as deindustrialization.

- You'll see the emergence on a global scale of places like China, Taiwan, and then, later on, as the world changed, Bangladesh, India, all sorts of markets to run off to with unskilled labor at the lowest of prices that no American workers could ever compete with.

How the heck do you negotiate the going overseas of your jobs?

I mean, there are ways of doing it, but management has 1,001 other ways to get around you even knowing what they're doing.

And so it was very difficult for the labor movement to curtail that type of activity.

- [Narrator] As the union picketed, day after day, for months on end, Gorham employees who dared to go to work were labeled scabs.

- There were scabs.

They're in there doing our work.

We feel we have a right to stop 'em.

They're on private property.

None of the people in the cars asked the police to let them go through.

We feel they violated the law.

(people chattering) - Come on, come on.

- I don't like the idea of scabs coming here, taking my job, after me working here for 23 years.

That's what hurts.

I started here at 90 cents an hour.

I built my pay up to 5.40.

And, you know, I'm gonna have these people taking my job?

I think it's rotten.

I really do.

- It got very violent.

My father told a story about one of the vice presidents going through the line, and they rocked his car, and he ended up in the hospital.

Eggs were thrown all the time.

There was a guy out there with a mirror.

He would point the mirror into the sun and try to blind the cars as they were going in.

- Gorham asked the salaried people to go into the factory and do the best they could in terms of working the sterling silver flatware lines to make product, just to keep some flow to the system.

So when I would go in, I would go out into the factory every day, and I'd be grinding and polishing sterling silver flatware, just like the rest of the people.

And as far as design responsibilities, that was not important.

It was important to keep making sterling flatware as best we could.

- [Narrator] Over seven grueling months later, a settlement was finally reached, and the Gorham strike ended.

- You could almost say that the thing that put an end to that strike was pure exhaustion.

I don't think either side at the beginning ever fathomed for one moment that it would last as long as it did.

And of course, once they got into it, neither side wanted to yell uncle.

Eventually they all came to their senses and worked out something they could at least live with.

(soft, bright music) - [Narrator] Four years after the strike ended, another crisis would shake Gorham and the entire silver manufacturing industry to its core.

It was orchestrated by Nelson Bunker and William Herbert Hunt, sons of a Texas oil billionaire, who purchased roughly 2/3 of the world's privately-held silver in an effort to hedge against inflation and what they believed would be the inevitable collapse of the US dollar.

As a result, the Hunts drove up silver prices to astronomical values.

An advertisement run by Tiffany & Co. on March 26th, 1980 summed up the situation.

"We think it is unconscionable for anyone to hoard several billion, yes, billion dollars worth of silver and thus drive the price up so high that others must pay artificially high prices for articles made of silver.

- The hunt brothers drove the price of silver over $43 an ounce in January 1980.

What did it do?

Destroyed the silver business.

People, little old ladies, were standing on corners in Providence with their 1860s tea sets that their grandparents had paid $1,200 for that now in scrap value was worth $4,000.

They melted them.

It was the Holocaust of the silver business.

- As a bridal gift, you could afford to give a whole place setting to a young bridal couple for about $60.

Suddenly now, it had escalated to the point that a fork would cost well over $100 dollars.

So obviously you no longer could give a place setting.

And who would wanna give a bridal couple a fork?

- I know, when I got married, we just decided it's unaffordable for the people we're inviting to our wedding, so we went with stainless.

But a whole set of stainless for less than it probably would've cost for one or two place settings of sterling.

And I've been happy with that ever since, because you don't have to polish the stainless.

- [Narrator] Flatware had always been Gorham's biggest moneymaker.

Fortunately, the company had already entered the stainless steel market, and was among the top performers.

- Most it was made in Japan and brought over here.

It was our designs, but it was made there.

- [Narrator] During the 1980s and '90s, Gorham continued to diversify their product line.

Their crystal division was making tens of millions of dollars, surpassing their silver sales, and a new division was introduced, the Gift World of Gorham.

- The gift division was treated as a separate division.

It had its own sales force so that it wouldn't conflict, because dolls are sometimes, people say, "Wow, how does that relate to tableware?"

- [Gerald] For generations of Americans, the name Gorham was synonymous with quality.

And so that name stamped on other things, it all probably brought some goodwill initially, but eventually people realized that Bert and Ernie with the name Gorham on it isn't the same thing as their mother's wedding silver.

- We were not Tiffany anymore.

At one point we were Tiffany, and I'll state this for a fact: in some categories and areas, we were considered better than Tiffany.

If you wanna compare Tiffany and what happened, Tiffany stayed away from the mass market.

Gorham decided, along with a lot of other companies, that they wanted to diversify and go into that mass market.

I used to say, follow your signature.

Your signature will tell you who you are.

All of a sudden, your signature changes, or you change, and you're like, who are you?

You have to look in the mirror.

And I think we were not looking in the mirror during those years.

- [Gerald] As late as 1960, almost 2/3 of their product was still silverware, whereas, by the early 1980s, not even half of what has the Gorham name on it is even made in Providence anymore.

As Gorham began to manufacture less of its product line here in Providence, that space out on Adelaide Avenue, that huge H-shaped factory, was becoming increasingly empty.

- [Narrator] In 1986, Gorham decided to relocate production to the old Speidel watchband plant in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

With downsizing came the daunting task of finding a new home for the mountain of records, design drawings, casting patterns, and other materials stored in Gorham's vast basement.

The rich and impressive history of an industrial giant was at stake.

- I contacted the National Archives, I contacted Smithsonian Institute, Metropolitan Fine Arts Museum, Boston Fine Arts Museum, Chicago Fine Arts Museum.

Each one of those entities were interested in the archives, but only a certain section.

I then started to look locally.

- [Narrator] The search led to Brown University's Hay Library, which agreed to accept a staggering amount of archival material.

- It's the entire surviving history of the company, without all the records that have been lost.

So 6,000 linear feet is what survives.

50 football fields full of material.

- This ranges from business records to costing slips.

It is an absolute wealth of information.

- All silver companies have records.

What was extraordinary about Gorham's records is that they're still around.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Sam Huff was hired as the archivist for the project, and became a hero of this behemoth undertaking.

- A lot of the records, when he got to them, were moldy.

But he had heard from somebody that, apparently, the kind of fungus that grows on paper is akin to that that grows on human feet.

He tried a tube of Desenex.

He put the Desenex all over the records after he'd pulled them out of this bad condition.

And he found that it actually did some good.

Now, this is not the way you really want to treat archival material.

A conservator would blanch and fall over in a dead faint to hear this.

But we are fortunate that some of his impromptu rescue techniques actually did work, and we are the beneficiaries of that.

- [Narrator] Thanks to valiant efforts, a great deal of Gorham's records survived.

Most of the company's hollowware dies, however, we're not as fortunate.

- I received a call from Mr. Fred Roy, Sr., who said to me, "Peter, I know you're interested for your museum.

The corporation's made a decision that no one will ever have the Gorham designs in the future, and we are destroying all the Gorham dies."

This is not flatware.

This is hollowware.

He says, "They're all in the parking lot, and we have three welding companies defacing them before they're scrapped.

Come and take what you want."

And I went there in my truck.

My heart was beating.

This was a call I had to act on immediately.

I had other things to do.

I had a life.

And I ran to the parking lot and like Spider-Man shooting the web out, my hands, my arms, were all going in different directions.

And my mind said, "Cherubs," and I chased cherubs.

"Shells, shells make good earrings.

Chase shells."

And I chased shells.

"Represent Gorham.

Get a mirror, get a candlestick, get a salt shaker, get a tray, get a cup, get a trivet.

Get anything that a silverware company would make."

And I did, and I worked all day, and I got over 170 dies, and they all weighed tons.

And I pulled wherever I could pull.

And I had my jewelry brain on the left side and my historical brain on the right side.

So in some weird way, I collected things that could become a bracelet or reduced down to the shape of an earring, but at the end of the day, I didn't know that I collected the history and I'm the custodian of the Gorham manufacturing history.

(soft, bright music) - [Narrator] Before the move to Smithfield was complete, Gorham's then president, Jim Thomas, spoke about the need to move millions of dollars worth of Gorham silver, silver that included the exquisite 816-piece Furber Collection, which had been sold back to Textron by a member of the Furber family, Martele items and showpieces, all valued at well over $3 million.

- When Jim said we have to move the silver, it was sort of in passing, and I took that to say, "Well, we gotta move the silver."

That was on my mind.

Wrote that down Gotta cross that off my list.

So one day I spoke to my father.

I said, "Thomas wants to move the silver."

He says, "Well, get on it."

I go, "I need help."

He goes, "Well, what do you need?"

I said, "I need a truck and about 10 guys."

He goes, "You've got it."

So it was kind of easy in that way.

Maybe month later, I get a call.

"Please go down to Mr. Thomas's office."

I walk in.

"Okay, Fred, I have all these people.

They're gonna sit down.

You're gonna tell 'em all about the silver archives.

Brink's is gonna move it.

State police are gonna escort.

And these guys," who were providing extra coverage, or whatever, "they're gonna tell you how things should be packed and how we're gonna do all that."

I looked at Jim.

I said, "Oh, I already moved it."

(laughs) And everybody's face dropped, including Jim's.

Jim said...

I said, "Well, you told me to move it."

He says, "No, I said we were gonna move it."

And I said, "So are you upset with me?

He says, "No, I'm not upset with you.

Great.

You moved it."

He said, "did anything happen?"

I said, "No."

"Did you lose anything?"

"No."

He says, "Great."

He says, "I'm very happy."

The Brink's guy goes, "Well, how did it get moved?"

I said, "Well, we got our truck one Saturday morning, and I got a bunch of yard guys together."

"Where are they from?

Do you know they're all trustworthy guys."

"Yeah, they're all the guys that worked for the company 20 years or so."

"And who supervised 'em?"

I said, "Well, I did."

I lied a little bit, 'cause I went for two or three trips, and I let Vinny finish the rest of 'em.

He could've gone to Canada with a couple of million dollars of silver, but they didn't.

- [Narrator] In 1989, shortly after the move to Smithfield, Textron sold Gorham to Dansk International Designs.

- Gorham was more formal, Dansk was more casual, so it was a wonderful fit between the two brands, because they didn't compete.

Two years later, or 2 1/2 years later, we were sold to Lennox.

And in my opinion, that wasn't a good fit.

We were both sort of traditional companies.

So if there was a great design that, say, I wanted for Gorham, in many cases, I wouldn't win, because the senior brand would get it.

There was a lot of conflict between Gorham and Lennox.

25 years later, the brand is becoming non-existent, because ultimately there's only so many brands that a company can manage and people have the heart for.

That's what I think happens a lot.

When companies are purchased by other companies, you lose all the people, you lose the people that had all the history with the company, that were the soul of the company, and eventually they're just a brand.

- My own belief is that Gorham should've been packaged and sold off as a proper name.

Instead, it was just sold off with a volume number and a name.

It has none of the DNA or its genesis of what it was.

It's simply a name put on a piece of metal.

- [Narrator] Far removed from the titan of silver manufacturing that it once was, Gorham has left a legacy that is both revered and tarnished.

- It's important to tell the story of the aftermath of this great industrial plant, because it's representative of many, many, many industrial sites in this state and around the country.

- Built around Mashapaug Pond, long before environmental laws existed, Gorham deposited toxic byproducts from production into the pond and onto its land.

- It sounds crazy now, but that was a way to manage your waste.

You didn't have the facilities to take the waste back then.

For good or for bad, a lot of these companies managed it on their own property.

(soft, bright music) - [Narrator] Almost 100 years after the factory was first built, Textron sold the Gorham property to a private developer, who then lost it in a tax foreclosure.

The City of Providence became the new owner.

- They had been attempting to sell it, to get it redeveloped, and they determined that it just wasn't happening.

So they had made a decision that they were gonna demolish those structures, clear the property, and develop it.

- [Narrator] As a designated state historic site, the city first had to hire a team to photograph and write a report about every single structure on the property, over 30 in total, before anything could be demolished.

- I remember, that first day, I was like, "How do you start eating an elephant?

", in a sense.

Like, where do I begin with it?

So I went to the back of the property, and I thought, "Okay, I'm just gonna work my way forward."

Right after they built that factory, they did a big album, and where I could, I tried to recreate that point of view and find those spots.

Pretty depressing, actually, to see the transformation, from the pride of 1890, to 1997, where it was so far gone that no one would be interested in even trying to save it.

(melancholy music) - [Narrator] With the documentation complete, the City of Providence could begin redevelopment.

Textron had agreed to clean up the site to make it safe for commercial use.

The plan, which was a relatively simple remediation, had already been approved by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

- Everything changed when the city decided to build a school out there, and started building a school without approvals.

They needed to complete a more comprehensive investigation regarding concerns about vapors in the ground, and they needed to have a plan approved by the department before they started construction.

They didn't have that.

They went out there, they started breaking ground, and the community was very upset.

They immediately got their local politicians involved, and everything changed from that point on.

(bright, brooding music) - [Narrator] With many voices at the table, and Textron attentive to the community's needs, the Gorham site was remediated so that the new Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School could safely open its doors in 2007.

Well over a decade later, a pump-and-treat system still works around the clock to decontaminate the groundwater.

- The reality is that that kind of a remedy takes years and it could be decades before the groundwater concentrations are low enough where they won't produce vapors at a concentration that would be of concern.

- I really see it as a teaching pond.

I'm not sure that we'll ever be able to swim in it, because there's so much stuff in the sediment, but it has a lot to teach us, and I feel like you can sort of understand the history of this country by just looking at Mashapaug Pond.

- Water is life, (speaks in foreign language) in our language, is not just a cliche phrase, it's the truth.

And so when we think about resources like Mashapaug Pond being destroyed and the access to those waters being destroyed, that's to the detriment of everyone.

- I think there was a whole different philosophy, that this Earth was just for the taking, and with that taking, it was about making money.

It was always a resource to be consumed and used up, and no thought of the future.

- There were very different ways of viewing silver, and if we now go back and look at the land where this factory stood on and see how the toxic chemicals from the silver-plating processes and other processes that went into making it, I mean, God, I'd rather have a pristine pond with healthy fish in it than a silver plant.

And now we have neither.

The trade-offs were made, I guess.

(soft, bright music) - I always remember the day that Textron announced that we were being sold to Dansk.

And an armored car drove up to the factory in Smithfield and went in and took the whole Gorham Collection of silver, the Furber Collection, all those other pieces kept in the vault.

And I was just aghast that that happened.

But ultimately, I would say Textron had a lot of foresight, because eventually, that whole collection was given to RISD.

- [Elizabeth] The Gorham Collection is a very important part of the RISD Museum's collection.

We own over 2,300 pieces of Gorham silver, and this is the largest collection in any institution and most likely private collection in the world.

- [Narrator] On May 3rd of 2019, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum opened a special exhibition, "Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance, 1850 to 1970."

It brought together incredible Gorham creations, such as the award-winning Codman writing desk, items from the lavish Furber service, and the larger-than-life Admiral Dewey Cup, made from 70,000 silver dimes.

Preparing all of the silver for the exhibition took three years of polishing and a small army of volunteers.

- This is really the largest conservation project we've ever done at the RISD Museum, but it became this wonderful teaching moment.

It became an opportunity to educate students, and also the public, because members of the public, of the community, became involved.

- On Thursdays and Fridays, I would go in and spend a couple of hours.

And family and friends said, "Why would you do that?

You did that as a part of working in service as a child.

It's a task."

And I thought, it's a task to them.

For me, it is a chance to be reseduced again by what all this meant.

Some of these pieces were made over 100 years ago, and someone had taken care of them and used them and passed them on to another generation.

And now, for a moment or two, or a half hour there, in my hands, to hold onto and to work with and to be beguiled by.

(soft, bright music) - [Narrator] Over 150 years since John Gorham revolutionized an industry, the story of the Gorham Manufacturing Company is a complex tale of artistry, innovation, and American capitalism.

The company survived wars, economic depressions, and the changing taste of society, until ultimately, silver, the heart and soul of Gorham, no longer had a place at the table.

- It's a very sad thing, but change happens, and there's only so much you can do about it.

Gorham could've gotten into jewelry, like Tiffany, and maybe still be around, but it would be a different company.

- There isn't the demand for the product, and if the demand isn't there, and consumer tastes change, things evolve.

- I think they live on through collectors and silver dealers and people who are passionate about their silver.

(soft, bright music continues) - Think of the humanity behind it.

So to speak, the ghosts of all the master craftsmen who produced the product.

To be even a minute part gives you a lot of pride.

(rousing music) (bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Chasing Silver: The Story of Gorham" has been provided in part by.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Our story began 70 years ago.

For decades, our fine jewelry has been curated from around the globe.

At Ross-Simons, we believe that every piece of our jewelry can be part of your story.

(upbeat music)