Edward C. Moore
New York, 1827 - 1891
In 1868, when Tiffany's became incorporated, Moore sold his shop to Tiffany's and became an officer of the company and the director of its silver department. He played a pivotal role in expanding the department and establishing Tiffany and Company's international reputation as the maker of some of the most significant nineteenth-century American silver. At Tiffany's Prince Street factory he had established in the 1860s a sort of craft school for silversmiths, which was modeled after the French system he had seen on trips abroad in 1855 and again in 1867. Combining the skills of business management with design capabilities, Moore was able to manage the industrialization of Tiffany's production while maintaining high artistic standards.
Moore was deeply committed to producing silver in the Japanese style, and objects with oriental decoration and using oriental techniques were perhaps his greatest contribution to the look of Tiffany silver. But he was also interested in Islamic (which he called Saracenic) art and the art of many other cultures. His collection of about 2,500 ancient, medieval, oriental, Islamic metals, textiles, lacquers, armor, and other objects was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on his death, along with his working reference library of some 556 books; both had been essential sources for his silver designs. His surviving sketchbooks also demonstrate his intense study of many different kinds of objects from a variety of traditions. The silver Moore created was noted for its utility and beautiful form and also for its experimental nature. He developed the use of mixed-metal designs, etching, enameling, oxidation, and other innovative manufacturing techniques. While heavily influenced by historic and exotic sources, Moore's silver achieved an air of individuality through its combination of design elements and fine craftsmanship.
Moore's silver frequently won medals and honors at the important international fairs and expositions of the last half of the nineteenth century, beginning in 1867 at the Paris Exposition Universelle and including the 1876 Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. The "hammered silver" (with visible hammer marks left on the surface, rather than being planished out) designed by Moore and exhibited by Tiffany's at the Paris Exposition of 1878 received the Grand Prix and helped establish the United States as the international leader in silversmithing, winning honors in competition with the finest wares from England and France. His Saracenic work was similarly honored at the 1889 Paris fair, when Moore was also named a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government.
Moore died at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He had been married and was the father of four sons. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Union League, Century, Manhattan, and Aldine Clubs, and of the Architectural League. At his death, the Illustrated American (29 Aug. 1891) remembered him as "easily the foremost silversmith in the United States. It is largely due to his skill and industry that American silverware has reached a degree of perfection that makes it celebrated all over the world. He practically developed a new industry here: but modest and retiring, almost morbidly averse to publicity of any kind, he passed through life without assuming in the eyes of the general public the credit he so well deserved." One of his grandsons, John C. Moore, was president of Tiffany's from 1907 to 1938 and chairman to 1947.
Although Moore was widely known in his own lifetime, his name quickly became eclipsed by the more famous names of Charles L. Tiffany and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Beginning in the 1970s, however, scholars such as Charles Carpenter and Mary Grace Carpenter resurrected Moore's reputation, recognizing his essential contribution to the history of American Victorian silver.
Bibliography
Moore's professional life is documented in the Tiffany Archives, Parsippany, N.J.; Moore's own working library of reference works is at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art, along with his collection of ancient, medieval, oriental, and Islamic decorative arts. Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., and Mary Grace Carpenter, Tiffany Silver (1978), remains the best survey of Tiffany's during the Moore era. See also Bruce Kamerling, "Edward C. Moore: The Genius behind Tiffany Silver," Silver 10 (Sept.-Oct. 1977): 16-20, 10 (Nov.-Dec. 1977): 8-12; and Doreen Bolger Burke et al., In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement (1986), which includes many bibliographical citations on pp. 472-73. For a recent survey placing Moore's work in context, see Charles L. Venable, Silver in America, 1840-1940: A Century of Splendor (1994).
Gerald W. R. Ward,
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American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
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Dublin, 1848 - 1907, Cornish, New Hampshire
