| Biography/History: |
William Dean Whiting (1815-1891) was a silversmith who began his career as an apprentice to his uncle John Tifft at the Attleboro, Massachusetts jewelry-manufacturing firm Draper and Tifft. With his uncle’s financial backing, William and his cousin Albert Crandall Tifft formed Tifft and Whiting in 1840, which produced such items as gold hearts, crosses, and rings. The firm underwent several subsequent expansions, but was liquidated in 1866 due to debts. Later that year, Whiting and several partners then founded the Whiting Manufacturing Company. After a fire destroyed the Attleboro factory in September 1875, the firm moved to New York City. By 1893, Whiting was the third largest silver-manufacturing firm in the United States. The Whiting Manufacturing Company was one of the most prolific and successful silver companies known for its beautifully designed and executed Japanese-inspired silver it made between 1874 and 1890. While Tiffany and Company and the Gorham Manufacturing Company were larger, more established manufacturers, Whiting’s designers were particularly original in appropriating Japanese and naturalistic motifs drawn from Japanese prints, pottery, metalwork, and textiles-as well as from European print sources Except for its founding partner and first chief designer, William Dean Whiting, who retired in 1880, the firm's most important designer was Charles Osborne. For a time during the 1880s, Osborne had worked for Tiffany before returning to Whiting. His designs are some of the most important of the American aesthetic movement. In 1905, partially because of labor problems across the silver industry, Whiting joined Gorham’s Silversmiths Stock Company. From then on, the quality of Whiting silver declined and it was no longer considered a competitor to Gorham and Tiffany. Gorham moved Whiting’s production to its facility in Providence, Rhode Island in 1924 and it discontinued the Whiting brand in 1926. |