The silver years.

• Author: Eauclaire, Sally
• Position: Spanish colonial-era silver works

Although tales abound of the Spanish conquerors' lust for gold, silver was truly the treasure of the Americas. From the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century, the Spanish colonial silversmiths turned out pieces of rare beauty that are highly collectible today.

Yet Spanish colonial silver has never been as publicized or appreciated as its English, European or New England counterparts. Few pieces exist and those are generally hidden away in private collections or museum vaults. Interest is growing thanks to the inclusion of silver works in the recent blockbuster exhibition Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries as well as in some of this year's quincentennial exhibitions such as Cambios: the Spirit of Transformation in Spanish Colonial Art, which opens in December, 1992, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Connoisseurs speak of the remarkable weight, texture, patina and color of Spanish colonial silver - distinctions that sometimes elude people who have not examined and handled large numbers of specimens. The specialist's vocabulary, too, can frustrate newcomers, for the words that appear in books and auctioneers' catalogues are not always defined in regular dictionaries. For example, the word "plate," which is bandied about by insiders, refers to solid silver, not to silverware manufactured with the modern process of electroplating involving the fusing of a thin skin of silver onto a base metal. By contrast, the sheer mass and weight of Spanish colonial silver plate is unmistakable.

Another telltale sign is the technique of hammering. Most plate was made by pounding a sheet of thick, soft metal into the desired form, then smoothing it with a small flat-faced tool. Less skilled artisans left dents while masters achieved velvety smooth surfaces whose slight textures give pieces their signatorial shimmer. Rims, beaded borders and other edges were most often tooled directly on the piece, but accessory parts such as feet, handles, spouts and finials tended to be cast separately and attached by soldering. Often the more complicated pieces disassemble for easy cleaning or so that the parts can be used separately.

The thickness and pure silver content of the Spanish colonial pieces reflect the abundance of raw materials in the Americas. Like colonial buildings and furniture of adobe, clap-board, walnut or mahogany, the so-called "strong surfaces" of old silver plate contrast markedly with the "weak surfaces" of European pieces of the same...