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International Silver Company

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International Silver Company

The International Silver Company (1898–1983, stopped making silver), later known as Insilco Corporation and also known as the ISC, was formed in Meriden, Connecticut as a corporation banding together many existing silver companies in the immediate area and beyond.

In Meriden and nearby Wallingford and Middletown, the companies that were banded together to form the International Silver Company included these companies: Meriden Britannia Company, Meriden Silver Plate Co., Middletown Plate Company, C. Rogers & Brother, Simpson, Hall, Miller & Co., Simpson Nickel Company, Watrous Manufacturing Company, and the Wilcox Silver Plate Co. In Hartford, the following silver companies also became part of the corporation: Barbour Silver Company, Rogers Cutlery, and William Rogers Manufacturing Company. Other Connecticut companies that became part of the corporation also include Holmes & Edwards Silver Company in Bridgeport; Derby Silver Company in Derby; Norwich Cutlery in Norwich; Rogers and Brothers, and Rogers and Hamilton in Waterbury.

From outside New England were Manhattan Silver Plate in Lyons, New York; and Standard Silver Company, Ltd. in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Into the 20th century, many silver designs carried either the International Silver Company brand, the pre-existing brand, or both were listed as the design maker.

A founding member of the company was Senator Charles Dwight Yale, nephew of merchant William Yale, and member of the Yale family.

Starting in the late 1930s, ISC sponsored the Silver Theater, a radio program in Hollywood featuring many stars of the era and was broadcast on CBS radio. In parallel, print advertisements in LIFE and other magazines starting in 1937 featured product endorsements for ISC / 1847 Rogers Bros. silverware by several Hollywood movie actresses including Anne Baxter, Constance Bennett, Janet Blair, Virginia Bruce, Madeleine Carroll, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Linda Darnell, Olivia de Havilland, Laraine Day, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Joan Fontaine, Kay Francis, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Paulette Goddard, Susan Howard, Veronica Lake, Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy, Mary Martin, Merle Oberon, Gail Patrick, Ginger Rogers, Shirley Ross, Rosalind Russell, Martha Scott, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Barbara Stanwyck, Risë Stevens, and Loretta Young. Actor Conrad Nagel was the show's presenter.

In 1949–50, the program continued on CBS television as The Silver Theatre.

International Silver Company designs have been collected by many museums across the United States, including the Dallas Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, etc. Museums overseas that have collected ISC designs include the British Museum in London.

International Silver Company designs have been exhibited in numerous museum exhibitions in the United States and abroad. For example, ISC was represented at several Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions during the late 1920s and 1930s, including "The Architect and the Industrial Arts: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Design" (1929). ISC is particularly known in the museum world for its high-quality Modernist designs from 1928 into the 1960s, which were exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Wolfsonian in Miami Beach, Florida in 2005–07. This exhibition highlighted many ISC design achievements, including its installation called the "Moon Room" exhibited in the Pavilion of American Interiors at the 1964 New York World's Fair from 1964 to 1965.

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