The Brown University Library has been awarded an IMLS National Leadership planning grant for the purpose of collaborating with the RISD Library and the RISD Museum in the development of a new database architecture that will allow users to explore the complete extent of the design process used by the Gorham Manufacturing Company to create its hand-crafted consumer silver products. Once completed, the new database will initially be populated with drawings, sketches, and digital objects pertaining to Gorham’s Martelé line, a product that was entirely handmade and unique to the Gorham Manufacturing Company.

Founded in 1831 and no longer extant as a manufacturing enterprise, Gorham was at one point the single largest manufacturer of consumer silver products in the world and a major component of Rhode Island’s jewelry industry. In 1890, Gorham employed some 900 workers – the majority of them skilled craftsmen. Gorham’s ascendancy in the production of high-end consumer goods in silver was rivaled only by that of Tiffany. Gorham’s impact on the City of Providence, and all of Rhode Island, was extensive and lasting.

This project represents the first phase in a complex multi-institutional effort to improve user access to the large and underutilized collections that form the Gorham Company Archive, which is now divided between the Brown University Library (which holds the vast majority of the company’s archives and corporate records), the RISD Library (which holds the Gorham design library) and the RISD Museum (which holds an extensive collection of Gorham silver objects and designs). The proposed database will begin to address public demand for access to information on the Gorham Company and its products, and will make accessible, for the first time, many unique sketches, designs and presentation drawings that document Gorham’s dominance in the production of high-end silver goods during the early twentieth century, as well as its long history of innovation in silver design. At the end of the initial phase of the project, the Brown University Library and the RISD Library and the RISD Museum will have assembled a workable prototype for a user-friendly database that will assist a broad range of users, from museum curators to silver collectors to the general public, by allowing them to freely explore the Gorham design process across three repositories.