Contemporary Silver

The art of the silversmith is at the cutting edge of modern design. Complex and vital, the work in the field of contemporary silverware combines ancient skills and techniques with the latest innovations in technology to produce objects that both reflect and challenge current aesthetic ideas.Taking as their brief the design of a simple fish server or cake slice, the British and American silversmiths whose work is represented in the more than sixty-strong collection of Benton Seymour Rabinovitch have produced an astonishing range of variations on a single theme. From the minimal simplicity of the purely functional to the lavish ostentation of the truly baroque, these pieces utilize elements of sea life, Scandinavian design, Florida Art Deco, eighteenth-century Rococo and totemic, timeless symbols of the natural world to forceful effect. Whether entirely abstract or startlingly representative, what these pieces have in common is the immense technical mastery that has gone into their design and construction - as well as the fact that, no matter how fantastic their appearance, they are all meant for practical use.