It’s not your mother’s pewter. The tableware and accessories designed by David Reiss and handmade by Italian artisans are metal of another mettle. More elegant, more refined than the tankards brought back as souvenirs from a European vacation or the reproductions of early American porringers most of us associate with that material.
After a long period of being ignored, says Reiss, pewter, once the poor man’s silver, is now collectors’ catnip. Reiss is credited with being the driving force behind this trend, having reintroduced pewter, with a few revolutionary twists, to the American public in 1995.
The designer will appear at Tabula Tua on Saturday to promote the pewter line of his New Jersey-based company, Match. He will speak that afternoon on all things pewter, including what it is, exactly.
“Pewter is predominantly tin, most of which comes from Africa,” says Reiss. “To be fine, pewter has to contain 92 percent tin. Ours is 95 percent. The balance of the alloy is copper for a little hardness and a little antimony for color.”
Out of this alchemy, tin becomes temptation to those who approach the tabletop as an art form.
Match’s 500-item inventory ranges from traditional candlesticks and boxes to flatware with working ends of stainless steel (because pewter is too soft to make a knife or fork), and glassware with a pewter base.
Most exciting of all, a new line Reiss introduced in January will be highlighted during his appearance here. Called Convivio, his pewter-rimmed soft white ceramic tableware seems to have a built-in siren call to collectors. The center of Convivio dinnerware is a modern formulation of earthenware, made about an hour outside of Venice, that is strong and heat-resistant.
Convivio’s marriage of materials is innovative because the pewter is poured, cast and fit together with the earthenware portion, without glue or clips, which were the previous methods of conjoining the materials, says Reiss.
The Convivio line includes dinner plates, soup or pasta bowls, salad or dessert plates, cereal bowls, mugs, and oval and round serving platters.
Reiss believes Convivio “will impress the public with its quality and change consumer’s minds about the status of pewter.” As he puts it in perspective, “in the Middle Ages you had nobles who lived in castles who ate off silver and guys living off the land who ate off pewter. Pewter was a tradition that was firmly in place until the Renaissance, when the life of ceramics began, which sort of pushed pewter to the side.”
On the fashion-forward West Coast, pewter already has made the A-list, even pre-Convivio. Tom Blumenthal, the owner and president of Gearys, a Beverly Hills, Calif., store, was one of Reiss’ first customers, placing his first order in October 1995.
“We hadn’t sold any pewter in the store for years because the quality and designs available just weren’t selling,” Blumenthal says. “We started out, as we do when we get into any new category, with a small order. It sold fast, and we’ve re-ordered and re-ordered and re-ordered.”
The quality of Match, he adds, “is far superior and it’s got that Italian flair.”
Holding it together
The owl and pussycat pairing of pewter with ceramics is not really new, says Reiss. “The combination started 300 years ago in Germany, and it was done most of the time with beer steins [with handles and caps often of pewter] and crockery.”
But it took the designer a year and a half to figure out a way to hold the pewter and ceramics together without any clips or glue. He is not revealing exactly how it works, but the look is great.
To see food placed on Convivio for the first time was nothing short of a revelation for Reiss “because I saw it is a frame for the food,” he says.
Reiss is himself a recent convert to pewter.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he was a buyer for Zona, a high-concept housewares store in SoHo, New York. He was in Italy on a buying trip when he came upon a booth at a housewares show in Florence displaying picture frames, flatware and alarm clocks, all in artisan-made pewter. “What stood out for me first were the pewter frames. I bought them for Zona and I saw the picture frames were something we could not keep in stock,” he says. “It wasn’t that they were well-designed. It was the material, the warmth and the nostalgia factor. There’s something about pewter that makes people comfortable.”
“I grew up on the East Coast, and was exposed to Williamsburg pewter,” he adds. “I didn’t even like pewter. But this stuff was different” because of how it was made.
“When pewter is spun and then molded into a tankard around an iron frame, you can not create forms like these,” he says, referring to his own elegant wares.
“The other method is pouring in molten pewter into a mold. It is more expensive, but when you pour pewter into a mold, the level of detail you can do is just phenomenal,” he adds.
He spends four months of the year working with two factories in the Dolomite mountains of northern Italy. “What inspires me most are the old designs, which I feel translate well into our modern and also traditional environments,” he adds.
“It is an interesting synergy for me between the material and the end product.” His rule of thumb is: “Use the best ingredients and keep it simple because then the ingredients can do the talking. Every material has a soul and pewter has an old soul. I know that to be true, and that is what drew me to this Italian pewter. I think there is romance and nostalgia in these materials.”
One of the beauties of pewter is it tarnishes very slowly, Reiss says, and you can wash it without having to polish it the way you do silver.
“Pewter looks better after it is old and after it gets a patina. I can offer the same product with a high finish, but I don’t because it looks like something trying to be silver but isn’t. There’s a warmth in pewter. You have to live with it for a while,” he says.
Grace Tsao-Wu, owner of Tabula Tua, says Match pewter has really been a hit with tableware junkies at her store.
“We have addicts at our store. We’ll have customers who buy up to 50 to 100 pieces. They start out collecting the more functional pieces. First they buy a big pitcher or serving piece, such as a casserole holder. They are so happy now that he introduced the dinnerware because now they can use it on an everyday basis,” she says.
Reiss himself eats cereal every morning out of a Convivio bowl. “I inevitably hit the faucet with the edge of the bowl. The advantage of the pewter rim is I can’t chip the edge. We also have a replacement program. The rim gets sent back to us and we recycle the pewter,” he says.
Here to stay
Water could possibly get into the juncture between the pewter and the earthenware, Reiss says, but will do no harm and the food will just wash away.
Reiss believes pewter is now a member of the tabletop family in good standing “and is here to stay.” He feels satisfied that “in some way I can help preserve the tradition of handmade artisanry at a very high level,” he says.
“I love things with roots that go back a few hundred years,” he adds. “For me, pewter is instant nostalgia. It looks like it is a few hundred years old, but you can use it every day, and you don’t have to baby it. You can take care of it in a modern way.”
Match pewter can be bought at Tabula Tua, 1015 W. Armitage Ave., 773-525-3500, Material Possessions, 54 E. Chestnut St., 312-280-4885, and 954 N. Greenbay Rd., Winnetka, 847-446-8840, and some pieces can be found at Barneys New York, 25 E. Oak St., 312-587-1700.
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On our cover
Here are prices for the Match pieces shown on our cover. (Match pewter is sold at Tabula Tua, 1015 W. Armitage Ave., 773-525-3500, Material Possessions, 54 E. Chestnut St., 312-280-4885, and 954 N. Greenbay Rd., Winnetka, 847-446-8840, and some pieces can be found at Barneys New York, 25 E. Oak St., 312-587-1700.)
Salad plate (clockwise from left), $58
Butter spreader, $28
Marta’s short candlestick, $60
Tall candlestick, $112
Low-footed bowl with handles, $225
Martini glass, $68
Candle snuffer, $40
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Meet the Match-maker
What: David Reiss, designer of Match pewter, will make a personal appearance at Tabula Tua.
Where: 1015 W. Armitage Ave.
When: Nov. 15
Hours: Noon to 5 p.m., with a special presentation and talk by Reiss at 1 p.m.
Call: 773-525-3500; reservations suggested.
