Modern silver: the good, the bad, and the really, really bad!  They just don’t make it like they used to!

USUALLY this is sadly the case.  But there are talented silversmiths out there who are creating wonderfully new and interesting pieces for a world that has all but abandoned domestic silverware.  The super talented Belgian artists at Thalen & Thalen are just such people.

The Explosive silver bowl featured, is deceptively simple: a piece of silver with jagged, torn fissures …  as if it had been slashed by a wild animal. But then one realizes this is a piece of 925 contemporary silver design, not a vessel dug up in a farmer’s field- so now our mind sees it quite differently.  The whole body has been hand hammered to achieve the delicate finish, and the random slashes had to be cut from the bowl quite deliberately.  So suddenly we’re looking at an exquisite objet taking hours and hours of work to make it look as it is.

I would die to see this piece in a couple of years when the warm patina has begun to build on the surface of the bowl.  Silver is so unexpected in today’s interiors that its presence adds just the right amount of (shall we say?) polish to a room.