THE WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT SERVICE. A SILVER-GILT FLATWARE SERVICE, TIFFANY & CO., NEW YORK, PATENTED BY CHARLES GROSJEAN, 1884

the forks and spoons decorated on the front with the Vanderbilt coat of arms below a helmet on foliate mantle with acorn finial and above a scene of Actaeon and his hounds amongst laurel, and on the back with entwined monogram WKV above a hunting trophy of a stag's head, horn, bow and quiver of arrows, ending in a tassel against laurel branches emerging from an oak crown above a leopard skin; the knives decorated on the front with matching arms and helmet above a scene of Hercules and the Nemean lion, the back with the same monogram above a lion skin, Hercules' club and laurel branches, comprising:
thirteen dinner knives
thirteen dinner forks
thirteen dessert knives
thirteen dessert forks
thirteen dessert spoons
65 pieces

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

William P. Hood, Jr., Roslyn Berlin and Edward Wawrynek, TIffany Silver Flatware, 1845-1905: When Dining Was an Art, Woodbridge (Suffolk): Antique Collectors' Club, 1999, pp. 294-297.

Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., with Mary Grace Carpenter, Tiffany Silver, San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts 1997 (2nd ed.), pp. 84-85, fig. 109.

CATALOGUE NOTE

This pattern, one of only about ten private few patterns produced by Tiffany in the 19th century, was made for William Kissim Vanderbilt and his redoubtable wife, Alva. The second son of Commodore Vanderbilt, both William and his older brother Cornelius ordered Tiffany flatware with the family arms in 1884. The previous year, William and Alva's extravagant costume ball to open their Richard Morris Hunt-designed house at 660 Fifth Avenue had firmly established the Vanderbilts in New York society.

The design of both Vanderbilt patterns is given to Charles T. Grosjean, who filed the patent applications. However, the design of Actaeon being set upon by his hounds is very similar to the same scene on the game carving knife and fork from Olympian pattern, for which Edward C. Moore filed the patent application and which Antoine Heller probably helped design (see William P. Hood, Jr., Roslyn Berlin and Edward Wawrynek, TIffany Silver Flatware, 1845-1905: When Dining Was an Art, p. 213). The scene of Hercules with the Nemean Lion, his first labor, is similarly complimented in Olympian pattern by scenes of the second and fourth labors (ibid.).