The Oneida Community

This page is adapted from an article which originally appeared in Antique Week.

Setting the table: Oneida Community Collectibles

Oneida, Ltd. is a familiar name to collectors of sterling silver and silver plate. Before 1935, when the present name was adopted, the company was known as Oneida Community, Limited. Why Community? The word “Community” in the original name reflected the beginnings of the company as a 19th-century utopian commune.

In 1848, John Humphrey Noyes and his followers founded the Oneida Community in Oneida, N.Y. Members of this Protestant religious sect referred to themselves as Perfectionists because they believed that spiritual perfection could be achieved by them in this world. They contributed all their worldly goods to the community when they joined it. All possessions were held in common, and the community provided for everyone’s needs. They called this practice “Bible communism.”

Probably the Oneida Community is most remembered today for its unconventional family arrangements. Community members practiced what Noyes called complex marriage, that is, every man was married to every woman, just as every woman was married to every man. Although their neighbors equated this with “free love,” the Perfectionists defended complex marriage as noble and unselfish, since all were expected to be loving to all and exclusive – or “selfish” – relationships were discouraged. During the early years, children were also discouraged, but by 1869 when the community was more prosperous, couples selected for their desirable qualities were encouraged to have children. John Humphrey Noyes himself fathered several, including sons who were later very active in the affairs of Oneida, Ltd.

The Mansion House, the home of the Oneida Perfectionists, as it appeared in 1908. Some of their descendants still live there today.

At first the Perfectionists tried to support themselves by farming and by preserving and selling fruits and vegetables. This did not provide enough income, so they branched out into several industrial activities. An 1890s ad offered a booklet which “tells how we came to make such interesting and incongruous things as Delicious Preserved Fruits and Traps for catching Grizzly Bears, Fine Sewing and Embroidery Silk and Steel Chains. Also beautiful Spoons, Forks and Knives.” No other silver company started out by making traps for grizzly bears.

By 1877, when the Wallingford, Conn., branch of the community started the production of tin-plated spoons, the original Oneida Community was beginning to break up. In 1879, Noyes moved to Canada and complex marriage, was abandoned. In 1880, the assets of the community were distributed to its members in the form of stock in the newly formed corporation, Oneida Community, Limited.

Silverplate production was moved, first to Niagara Falls, N.Y., and later to Sherrill, N.Y., within walking distance of the original Oneida Community property. When the community became a corporation, some members found it difficult to adjust to new business practices and divided into factions which competed to control the board of directors. In 1895, a vigorous election campaign led to a change in management. Among the promoters of change was young Pierrepont Noyes, one of the sons of John Humphrey Noyes. Only 24, Pierrepont Noyes took over management of the silverware business and eventually became president of the company.

The quality of Oneida’s silverware had never been high. As Pierrepont Noyes put it in his book A Goodly Heritage:

The business fathers of the old Oneida Community, Perfectionists as they were, had successfully developed four industries by refusing to make any but the best of each article produced. Only their youngest enterprise, begun in those later days when worldly encroachments were shaking the foundations of the Community, was the exception. They made cheap silverware. What more logical, now, than for us to go back to the earlier traditions of our ancestors and make our competitors play the game of better quality silverware? That we decided, would be our new game. From then on, our discussions were confined to discovering ways of making better silver-plated ware than had ever been made before.

The first result of this new approach was the Avalon pattern of silver-plated flatware, introduced in 1901, followed by the popular Flower de Luce pattern in 1904, The mark “Community Silver” (later “Community Plate”) was adopted for this line of high quality ware.

Many people have been impressed by the communal origins of Oneida Community, Limited. Equally impressive, however, are the innovative business practices which marked the company during the years following the introduction of Community Plate. The results have created interesting possibilities for collectors today.

Artists were employed to design original and innovative patterns. Another son of the community, Grosvenor Allen, not only served as a director but also trained as a designer and created such patterns as Noblesse, Coronation and Grosvenor. Oneida was one of the few silver companies to offer silver in the Art Deco style, with the patterns Deauville and Noblesse.

A vigorous advertising campaign in national magazines kept the Community name before the public. The new ads were full page and often in color. These ads are graphically interesting. Today collectors particularly look for those ads signed by Coles Phillips and Jon Whitcomb.

Oneida designed and sold additional table items to match its flatware patterns. For example, in the Grosvenor pattern, the firm made as many as 38 different pieces of hollowware such as bread trays, meat platters, candlesticks, salt and pepper shakers, and a coffee service.

In the 1920s Oneida experimented with plastic. Knives in at least four patterns – Bird of Paradise, Paul Revere, Patrician and Grosvenor – were offered with plastic handles. A 1928 ad shows plastic handles in three colors described enthusiastically as “the translucent rose-red of rubies, the clear blue of sapphires, the scintillant green of emeralds.”

In the 1930s Oneida offered crystal and china to match its most popular flatware patterns. These are seldom referred to in the silver references I have examined, but I document them in my book The Community Table.

China, crystal and flatware, all in the Noblesse pattern

For your information

The Mansion House in Oneida, N.Y., can be visited. To learn more, visit the Oneida Community Mansion House website. Also, click here for an interesting blog about living at the Mansion House today.

For an inside account of the Oneida Community and the early development of Oneida Community, Limited, see Pierrepont Noyes’ reminiscences in My Father’s House and A Goodly Heritage, both available through the Mansion House Museum.

More recent accounts of the community are found in Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community by Spencer Klaw and Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation by Maren Lockwood Carden (Harper Torchbooks, 1969).

For drawings of all the Community Plate patterns, in date order, see Silverplated Flatware: An.Identification and Value Guide, 4th edition, by Tere Hagan (Collector Books, 1990). This book also illustrates patterns sold with Oneida’s other marks and reproductions of catalog pages which show some of the hollowware made to match the Paul Revere, Grosvenor and Bird of Paradise patterns.

For more information about these and other books, see Books about Silver.

My book The Community Table documents the items Oneida made and sold in seven popular patterns:

• Adam
• Grosvenor
• Bird of Paradise
• Deauville
• Noblesse
• Lady Hamilton
• Coronation.

Click on Book Orders to learn how to order any of my books.