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Lee P Thomas
Available in silver or mirror-finished pewter, Lexington Silver’s original barrel beaker is three inches tall. A four-inch version, called the slim, can double as a “coozy,” coming with two different liners to hold a standard soda or beer can or bottle. Photo furnished
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Famed Lexington silversmith Asa Blanchard. Photo furnished
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An example from the company’s Stirrup Cup Collection. The cups are designed to stand on either end and are typically stored upside down when not in use. Photo furnished
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The company’s “Asa Baby Cup,” from the Asa Blanchard Collection. Photo furnished
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The company also crafts money clips, cuff links and other accessories. Photo furnished
In the first decade of the 19th century, with a population of just over 4,300, Lexington was a thriving metropolis – Cincinnati’s population was about 2,500 at the time, and Louisville was “just a little trading post,” according to Foster Ockerman, president of the Lexington History Museum. It was during this period that burgeoning silversmith Asa Blanchard came to Lexington, Kentucky – the “Athens of the West” – from Virginia, looking for a piece of that prosperity pie. Blanchard placed an advertisement in the Kentucky Gazette in 1807, announcing the establishment of his Lexington business. He would go on to create silver teapots, sugar and cream pots, ladles, tumblers and other high-end entertaining items for more three decades, in a downtown Lexington shop located where Cheapside Bar & Grill is today.
Blanchard – sometimes referred to as “the Paul Revere of the South” – saw great success over the course of his 30-year Lexington career, and his designs continue to be among the most highly collected of early American silversmiths. And today, thanks to the Lexington-based company Lexington Silver – founded two years ago by former Keeneland executive Fran Taylor – Blanchard’s timeless designs are being reimagined and re-created for the first time in nearly 200 years.
“I became aware of Asa Blanchard when I was a college student at Transy [Transylvania University] in the early 1970s,” Taylor said. “I never forgot his importance as a silversmith and always wondered why his most iconic designs had never been reproduced.”
Among Blanchard’s iconic designs that are included in Lexington Silver’s “Asa Blanchard Collection” are a Julep cup, a pewter baby cup and a baby porringer (a small bowl with a reed handle) – but anchoring the line is Blanchard’s iconic “barrel beaker,” a small drinking glass shaped like a bourbon barrel, available in mirror-finished pewter or silver.
According to Taylor, it was her abiding love for the Kentucky traditions of horses, hospitality and bourbon that attracted her to Blanchard’s designs – and specifically to the barrel beaker, the item that served as her initial inspiration for starting Lexington Silver.
“The barrel beaker spoke to me on several different levels and kept speaking to me for more than 40 years,” Taylor said. “It is clever. I loved the fact that it is a drinking cup for distilled spirits that looks like the barrel in which those spirits are aged – it is simple but has an underlying elegance that transcends centuries.”
During Lexington Silver’s research and development phase, Taylor said she held her breath while applying for trademark protection for the barrel beaker, thinking that surely someone else had beat her to the punch. But she discovered that Blanchard’s barrel beaker hadn’t been reissued since his coin silver originals were made in the first half of the 19th century.
“We now know why – it takes highly skilled craftsmen to produce the barrel shape by hand on a lathe,” she said, adding that it took the company many months of trial and error to get the proportions and weight just so. Whether it’s 1817 or 2017, hand-spinning metal and shaping it on a lathe requires an experienced master spinner, and the rounded sides of the handle-less barrel-shaped beaker make it even more difficult to produce than many metal cups.
Though Lexington Silver is a Kentucky-based company, its products are made in New England, which is home to Taylor’s business partner, longtime metalsmith Guy Hurley, as well as a preponderance of metal-spinning master craftsmen. The company’s pewter products are spun in Connecticut; its silver items are produced in Massachusetts; and its decorative embellishments are cast (poured in a mold and applied) in Rhode Island. Engraving, by machine or hand, is done at Lextro in Lexington, making every step of manufacturing a domestic process.
After a year of development (2015) followed by a year of online sales, Lexington Silver expanded its reach in 2017, adding wholesale operations and new items, including a new line of products: the Stirrup Cup Collection. Traditionally given to guests as they were departing on horse – their feet in stirrups – stirrup cups today often feature highly ornamental bases and are intended to be stored upside down when not being used for drinking. The bases of the cups in Lexington Silver’s Stirrup Cup Collection feature detailed engravings fashioned in the shape of various animal heads, including wildcats, horses, dogs, bears, rams and deer.
The company’s products are now available in 20 retail outlets in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky; locally, Lexington Silver products can be found at LV Harkness, Thoroughbred Antique Gallery and the Keeneland gift shop. Most of the company’s efforts are currently focused on its growing online business (www.lexingtonsilver.com).
At the heart of Lexington Silver’s mission is to keep with Blanch-ard’s reputation for fine craftsmanship’s well as his character – in his heyday, he was a trustee of what would now be a chamber of commerce, as well as the local fire department, Taylor said, and was often asked by the courts to be an executor of estates.
“Asa Blanchard was a very well-respected person in town,” Taylor said. “I really wanted to resurrect who [he] was and keep his name alive.”