Text of report for the 437 Vegetable Serving Dish Prototype by Samuel Hough, derived from Gorham’s Costing Records in the Gorham Archives:

The Gorham Vegetable Dish 437

According to the Gorham Costing Book (Vol. 6, p. 182), the 437 Vegetable Dish was completed in October 1888. (The number within an oval, (510), indicates a sample, in this case a prototype, but at this period there are few records of samples and none for this.)

The file photograph of the 437 is in Photo Book Silver Hollowware 1889 #6, p. 33 (at p. 31 are the matching 435 Soup Tureen and 436 Oyster Tureen); also see Carpenter, p. 128, #126 for the Oyster Tureen.

The 437 Vegetable Dish is listed as a twelve-inch oval. It contained 64 troy ounces of sterling silver valued at $76.80.  Some of the silver was cast (finials, feet), which took five hours twenty minutes ($2.75). Chasing the castings took five hours at $2.00.

The dish was fashioned by a silversmith who worked 75 hours on it at a labor cost of $27.75. It was then chased for 82 hours 20 minutes ($33.00). Bobbing was the only polishing required; at a cost of seventy-five cents it was probably three hours' work. Finishing & oxidizing at $1.40 was about 3 1/2 hours work.

Total silver and labor costs came to $144.55. To this were added $28.91 for overhead and $43.36 profit for a sum of $216.82.

The net factory price, set at $238.00, was lowered to $228.00 in July 1880 and raised back to $228.00 (sic) in February 1892.

This is part of a set of hand crafted hollowware, made with no machine processes at all.