Jaydan Moore: Mending the silver lining

I.
My first encounter with Jaydan Moore’s work was a shock. It was the kind of experience I yearn for, wandering through unfamiliar cities or museums. Turning the corner at an art fair, I found myself contemplating an object so rivetingly strange that I just stood there, gaping, until someone shoved me.  (I was standing in the path of traffic.)

Picture a gleaming silver tray: the kind of thing that, once upon a time, was a familiar sight on the sideboard in homes both humble and grand across America. Made for serving tea, or maybe little sandwiches and biscuits, such trays are square, rectangular, oval or round, and are often engraved or stamped with elaborate scrolling patterns of leaves and stylized flowers.

Now imagine ten or fifteen of these things, some tarnished and scratched, sawed into fragments with exquisite precision. Various parts are joined with others as if they grew that way, creating a meandering linear serving piece of improbable dimensions. (See above.) Or…

Jaydan Moore, Platter/Tatter, 2015, sculpture, found silver-plated platters, 150 x 145 x 5 cm, photo: Mercedes Jelinek

they become a vast, amoeba-like formation, handles protruding from its edges like alien ears. At the center, there’s an accumulation of metal shards; much of the rest looks like disintegrating lace. Many fragments are the dark, dull gray of thunderclouds, but shiny glints of mirror-like surfaces emerge, then disappear into a crazy quilt of mystery metal.

Since 2012, Moore has been experimenting with this extraordinary process of collage/ bricolage, soldering together old silverplate: primarily salvers and trays, but also trophies and tableware. Sourced originally from second-hand stores or flea markets, his ‘raw’ material now comes mostly from Ebay—where somewhere between five and six thousand such pieces are offered for sale every day, for a dollar and up (plus shipping).

An assortment of silverplate at a white elephant sale.

These once-treasured objects embody countless lost histories. Heirlooms, gifts for weddings or anniversaries, even commemorative awards for achievements or service—all have been relegated to late capitalism’s vast trash heap of discarded stuff. Each one bears the evidence of wear: what Moore refers to as the “accumulated layering of worth, far more precious than the most valuable of materials.” Although his intention is to salvage objects that have lost their social (and monetary) value, he never removes their patina of age or traces of neglect. The stains remain. Even the way cut parts are stitched together with solder (and, often, reinforced with hidden discs of metal) invokes the conservator’s careful preservation of memories. Deep pasts, though anonymized, are left in every mark and dent.

But why was all this stuff as good as discarded? The answer is complicated. Some of it has to do with the representation and enactment of class: a subject we Americans shy away from, but which is present in our lives nonetheless. Economic and social upheaval played a role as well. I spent hours in libraries and deep on-line dives, leapfrogging from one peculiar specialist site to another,  trying to ferret out why something once considered an indispensable sign of status, manners and mores: an essential part of the guest-host ritual, has been summarily discarded. To begin, though, here is the first thing I learned— the difference between a tray, a platter and a salver.

II.
She expected everything in life to be handed to her on a silver platter.— Anon.

The word salver dates to sometime in the seventeenth century, and comes from the Latin salvare—meaning to save (possibly, because the food or drink served on it had been tested by a servant for poison before it reached the table)[1]. If you owned a salver, you were someone important. Unlike trays or platters, early salvers were flat and had no handles, though some had feet. Their use was more ceremonial, whereas trays carried increasingly heavy loads, like a full tea or coffee service.

In the opening decades of the 19th century, pieces made out of solid silver (referred to by the English, inexplicably, as plate) were still costly and highly prized.[2] Eating on silver dishes or displaying pieces of it in your home, such as candle sticks, trays, tea pots, utensils, etc., was still something reserved for the very, very rich. (Hence the expression ‘born with a silver spoon in her mouth.’) A process did exist for making somewhat more economical pieces by sandwiching a layer of copper between two wafers of silver before smithing the material into something[3].

It was, however, the discovery of electroplating[4] that really changed metalsmithing. By placing an object made out of an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel into a bath of electrically-charged water mixed with silver nitrate and potassium cyanide, a shiny, perfect layer only .0003 inches thick could be deposited onto its surface. No further finishing work was required, and—clearly-- very little actual precious metal was involved.

Suddenly, all kinds of silvery things were within the reach of the middle class, as the Industrial Revolution, in full swing by the mid-nineteenth century, drove a massive increase in production capacity. Here in the US, something else supported domestic manufacturing: protective tariffs. In 1842, rates were pushed up to 30% for imported manufactured goods--silver and silverplate alike. Foreign pieces were suddenly disastrously expensive, and American production boomed.

In the last quarter of the 1800s, “the dining room was one of the most important spaces in the home, where good manners and elegant appointments reinforced the moral and aesthetic world of the family and their visitors.[5]” Better transportation made all kinds of food available from coast to coast, and each new treat required its own serving dish or implement. There were oyster forks, asparagus plates, sardine tongs; picks for lobster or nuts, servers for cucumber or tomatoes. Butter, still a luxury, came to the table on tiny individual dishes. Knowing how to deploy all these implements correctly was a sign of good breeding. (Or, at the very least, a good memory.)

Silver flatware service, 1880, Dominick & Haff, Spoon at far left is either for bouillon , chocolate or ice cream.

Silverplate production peaked in the 1920s, just before the Great Depression. But even if the stock market crash hadn’t slowed down the metal’s consumption, less catastrophic changes were already having their own effect. The elaborate social rituals that necessitated all those spoons and forks, trays and teapots, were fading away. There were new ways to signal status, wealth and taste, such as cars, radios, and novel electrical appliances.  

Ad from 1952 magazine

Poverty sent women to work outside the home during the thirties— a phenomenon that continued on through WW2, as they took the places of men who had gone overseas to fight. Afterwards, though, it was back to the kitchen. Advertising of the time features a relentless emphasis on consumption and ‘modernization.’ Brides, many of them still teenagers, were now deemed too weak in body and mind (that is, too feminine) to work outside the home or go to college. But they could clean up a storm with all those new products and devices that ads urged them to buy. Ironically, just as housework became an ever-more complex and endless task, the maids and housekeepers that had been a part of even modest middle class households began to disappear. (That is, everywhere but the South, where wages remained abysmal and segregation prevented black women from taking any better-paid employment[6].)

This list of ten standard wedding presents from the 1950s does not include silver. What eighteen- year-old new wife would want to add polishing trays and teapots to a relentless round of cooking, cleaning, child care, and making herself desirable by the time her husband came home? She had enough jobs, salaried or not.

Of course, some heirlooms were still passed down from one generation to another. Nowadays, though, most Millennials don’t want any of their parents’ stuff-- from the ‘good’ china to the engraved soup spoons, the bric a brac to the brown furniture. Things like a silverplate salver or sugarbowl seemingly have even less appeal. Repurposed examples can be found on Etsy-- transmogrified into planters or picture frames, often painted in bright colors.

Does it say something about us as a people that so many once aspired to be silver platter owners, and then-- did not? In a single lifetime, so much has changed. As recently as the ‘60s, men and women still wore hats in public, and women, gloves. (And girdles, hose, and dresses… every single day, even when doing housework. Some change is undeniably positive.) Perhaps the fall of silverplate resulted from a loss of social ritual—and, with it, faith in the social order[7].

R

“repurposed” silverplate planters.

III.
For Moore, the fourth generation of a family of memorialists, rehabilitating such a material seemed like a natural choice. His great-grandfather, who lived right next to Oakland’s St. Mary’s Cemetery, ran a business making tombstones and memorials. Moore’s grandfather John Silva, a Portuguese immigrant, married into the family business, eventually starting his own company. At present, his daughter—that is, Moore’s mother-- is running it.

As a small child, Moore remembers listening to people grieve, as they tried to figure out how to best remember a recently-departed loved one with words carved into stone. It was part of his daily life. He also recalls noticing that, unlike most other families he knew, his relatives made things with their hands for a living. (Moore’s aunt and uncle are Marilyn and Jack Da Silva, noted metal artists and professors.) His dad’s self-sufficiency around the house impressed him, and at five, he wanted to be able to make everything in his own home when he grew up.

Two early ‘trophies’ made from found materials

In high school, Moore attended precollege summer classes in metals at California College of the Arts, discovering right away that he loved the material. After getting a BFA at CCA, he went on to get his graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. It was there that he began to think again about the act of commemoration: in particular, the objects we make and live with to preserve memories of people or events.  During his final year, he began constructing trophies from found materials. He had become fascinated by the idea of such awards, and by the variety of occasions on which such recognition was bestowed--  from thank-you’s for altruistic behavior or service, to celebration of physical excellence. Today, though, he has noted, most trophies are made of plastic and are often merely recognition of participation in a sport, rather than of any achievement.

aydan Moore, Specimen #5, 2013, silver-plated platters, 27 x 24 x 2 inches

While searching thrift stores for materials for these pieces, he began encountering silverplate platters and trays. He found himself wondering what would happen to the meaning of these objects if he dissected them into parts and combined selected elements together—not unlike the way we distill our life stories into key significant moments. I thought of births and deaths; marriages, graduations, even divorces.

Moore’s earliest platter-combines, like the one shown here from 2013, feature two conjoined pieces. He soon moved on to extravagant, multipart compositions. After a circuit of residencies and fellowships; of teaching and making, he has settled in Richmond, Virginia. There, he is making work that is startlingly ambitious in scale. Commissions and gallery sales keep him going.

He isn’t tired of silverplate yet—and even when he steps away from it, someday in the future, he won’t stop using found/recycled materials. He loves the fact that he isn’t contributing to mining or other resource depletion.

Platter / Scatter, 2019, wall sculpture, found silver-plated platters, 255 x 102 inches (dimensions variable)

Jaydan Moore, Table Scraps, 2016, silver-plated platters, 15.5 x 15 x 1.8 inches

Even now, virtually nothing is wasted in his studio. Table Scraps (2016) is a Frankenstein-like patchwork of pieces from many sources, framed by an elaborate misshapen edge. (Many of Moore’s titles are similar plays on words.) Trimmed-off rims and handles have been repurposed into a number of pieces that, like a stack of empty picture frames or the ghosts of mirrors, invoke skeletal wreaths.

In Coil (2019), he makes use of those elaborate edges in a yet another way, creating a dense, shield-like form—though the hole in its middle seems more playful than martial. He is constantly thinking of ways to use it all, as demonstrated by a group of small ‘sketches’ hanging on his studio wall.

Coil, 2019, found silver-plated platter edges, 38 x 38 x 2 inches; Etcetera, 2018, found silver-plated platter edge rims, 34 x 20 x 4 inches; studio experiments, 2019-2020

I ask him how he conceives of the pieces when he is working on them. “Sometimes I see the form as bacteria, a viral shape that expands. But I also see them as clouds… a distilled image—sort of like what the universe might have looked like after the big bang.” After a moment, he adds: “I also think about the idea of an object getting passed around the table. What is the path it takes? What is the full surface area of its movement?”

Katrina, 2014, print from platter, 22 x 30 inches

Occasionally, before disassembling a platter or tray, he makes a print, inking it like an intaglio plate. The incised or stamped lines are transformed into a delicate tracery of gray and black, a bit like the rubbings that people sometimes make from old gravestones[8]. Scratches are suddenly more visible, as well as other marks of age. If someone gives him an heirloom platter — which happens from time to time— he offers this printed memento in exchange. He tells me about how the parents in one family had both passed away, and he made a print of their treasured platter for all three of the adult children. None of them wanted the object, but each was happy to have this souvenir of its existence. 

And what relationship does he see his practice having to mending, I ask him. “Giving life to things a little longer is a form of repair,” he replies. “I am making objects that were likely to get scrapped, into something that shows their value, their evolution. I am only a snapshot in their life.”

He points to an area where he has carefully excised parts of a pattern until the edge of the piece seems to be on the verge of disintegration. “The piercing is a way of showing that they are aesthetic objects, but even that is beginning to disappear. Like moths are eating them. All objects have multiple histories. Maybe someday my own pieces will go through another evolution.”

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1] Or, possibly, the word comes from the Spanish salva, used to describe such a serving dish. Not surprisingly, there are multiple origin stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salver

 [2] Though not as expensive as aluminum—which, until a process was developed for its extraction in the 1880s, was valued above all other metals. According to Slate (7/3-/2010), “The French government once displayed Fort Knox-like aluminum bars next to the crown jewels, and the minor emperor Napoleon III reserved a set of aluminum cutlery for special guests at banquets. (Less favored guests used gold knives and forks.) The United States, to show off its industrial prowess, even capped the Washington monument with a six-pound pyramid of aluminum in 1884.”

[3] This product is called ‘Sheffield plate,’ which is confusing because there are also various companies called Sheffield that still make electroplated silver. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_plate

[4] The first patent for electroplating was issued in 1840, but the process actually dates back to 1805. “As frequently occurs with inventions, the early process was expanded and manipulated over the course of several decades by different individuals, and owes much of its success to other inventions.” https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/custom-manufacturing-fabricating/electroplating-development/

[5] “Silver in America: 1840-1940, A Century of Splendor,” Ellen Marsh, Humanities Magazine, November-December 1994, page 36

[6]  “…six out of ten urban white families above the poverty line in the South had a full-time domestic servant, compared with under 20% in the North.” The Economist, 8/20/2014. The relationship between race and domestic labor is much more complicated than this single passing mention indicates, and this subject deserves further ‘mending’ consideration.

 [7] Or maybe it’s just a matter of a change in taste. Other bizarrely anachronistic traditions remain: the full length, virginal Victorian white wedding dress, for example.

 [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_rubbing