Silver breakfast sets were a popular christening gift during the early years of this century, and New York's Tiffany and Company catered heavily to this demand. This silver set was presented to Eugene Walker by his godfather, Hoffman Nickerson. Mr. Walker was born in New York City in 1915 to John B. Walker and Mai Elmendorf Hackstaff.

This hot water urn belonged to Eugene Augustus Livingston.

The pair belonged to Hendrick Rutgers (1712-1779) and Catherine De Peyster (b. 1711), who were married in 1731.

The popularity of silver and electroplated service utensils during the mid-nineteenth century is illustrated by the growing array of specialized forms, including asparagus tongs, cheese scoops, fish slices and forks, serving forks, ice tongs, soup ladles, punch ladles, sauce ladles, sifter ladles, berry spoons, and nut spoons. This double-bladed gadget, with pierced upper blade, lever hinge, and larger lower blade, resembles oval or trowel-shaped fish slices and pudding and double-bladed asparagus servers made in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. The relative paucity of surviving double-bladed servers today implies that they were expensive, had limited functionality, and were not especially sought-after.

The city of Pau in southwestern France, said to be the birthplace of Henry IV, was a popular winter resort around 1900.

These charming spoons, ornamented with an overflowing basket of fruit and flowers, demonstrate the persistence of traditional silvermaking techniques and the reliance on simple time-honored methods for producing decoration in multiples. To ornament these spoons, the silversmith placed each handle end on a cut metal die and struck it to impress the decoration. While die-struck ornament persisted into the nineteenth century, this and other traditional processes began to be supplemented by labor-saving mechanical devices like the drop press and the flatting mill. These generously sized tablespoons bear the initials of Mary Beekman (1800-1885), who married William Axtell De Peyster (1793-1856) in 1822. Although such spoons were typically purchased in groups of a dozen, this set has been composed of nine spoons at least since Mary De Peyster's death in 1885. The inventory of her estate lists "9 Table sp. (basket of ___)" weighing nineteen ounces, along with twenty-six other items (or sets) of silver inherited by her daughters.