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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;SBSVC, post: 70190, member: 136&quot;]Since we&#039;re talking about American sterling manufacturers, I thought I&#039;d mention LUNT, which was manufacturing silver in Greenfield, MA from just after 1900 until 2010. The company went into bankruptcy late in 2009 and sold its brand name, patterns and inventory to Reed &amp; Barton.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back in 1969 or 1970, when I was in boarding school in the same area of MA as the Lunt company, I bought a Lunt &quot;spoon bracelet&quot; (a bit of a rage at the time - in prep school, anyway...) at a nearby jewelry store. I wore it for quite a while, then stuck it away &amp; didn&#039;t think about it again.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1978, when I was getting married, I looked thru TONS of sterling patterns and ended up choosing a Lunt pattern. It was simple and pretty, which was just what I wanted.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1983, when I was pregnant with my first child, my mom surprised me with the sterling baby spoon and fork and the silver &quot;youth set&quot; I had used as a child. </p><p><br /></p><p>To my absolute amazement, all 3 - the bracelet, my wedding silver, and the baby/youth silver - were the same Lunt pattern. (It must have been a subconscious memory from infancy!)</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, I guess you could say I&#039;ve always had a fondness for Lunt silver and was sad to hear about the company&#039;s demise.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for Woodward &amp; Lothrop (a/k/a Woodies) - I worked there in the mid-1970&#039;s during grad school in DC. The pay was lousy, and the employee discount was extremely limited, but I still loved working there. </p><p><br /></p><p>Woodies was a DC institution until the firm sold out to the May Company in 1995. There&#039;s even a book about them:&nbsp; <i>Woodward &amp; Lothrop: A Store Worthy of the Nation&#039;s Capital</i>, by Michael J. Lisicky (The History Press, 2013.) </p><p><br /></p><p>I love what Lisicky says about Woodies &amp; DC&#039;s other 2 &quot;hometown&quot; department stores:&nbsp; he says<i> Woodward &amp; Lothrop was like a Buick, or what Buick once represented: more upmarket than a Chevy (Hecht’s), less exclusive than a Cadillac (Garfinckel’s).&quot; </i> (Until we moved from the DC area, I bought my own dresses &amp; evening wear and my husband&#039;s ties at Garfinckel&#039;s, my household linens and kitchen stuff at Woodies, and underwear, socks &amp; stockings at Hecht&#039;s!)</p><p><br /></p><p>In any case, Woodies was a retailer, not a manufacturer. I have a number of sterling hollowware items with the W&amp;L mark on them, and I was told when I bought them that some were made by Towle and others by Gorham. I don&#039;t know what other manufacturing firms Woodies also might have used. I also don&#039;t know how late they continued offering silver items with the W&amp;L mark on them, but I know it was at least into the mid-1970&#039;s.</p><p><br /></p><p>-C-[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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