But the metal’s popularity hasn’t always been the case. “Pewter is one of those materials that was overlooked for a while,” says Alistair Byars, Edinburgh-based designer and curator for The Gathering Hand, who notes that metal casters have long favored bronze, silver, and aluminum. “Pewter used to be the MDF of the metal world.”
Esteemed art historian and curator Charles F. Montgomery’s seminal book on the subject, A History of American Pewter, details how the metal has fallen in and out of favor. “From the time of first settlement through the Revolutionary War, all Americans aspired to eat and drink from pewter,” wrote Montgomery, who died in 1978. “There is much evidence to indicate that most people in America until about 1820 ate with pewter spoons off pewter plates filled from pewter dishes.” But in the 1870s, the metal was usurped by ceramics. “Fashionable people turned increasingly to the new pottery wares, China-trade porcelains, and—for drinking vessels—glass.”
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Pewter would become a metal en vogue once again during the Art Deco and Swedish Grace period, notes Anthony Barzilay Freund, 1stDibs’s editorial director and director of fine art. Pewter, alongside chrome and aluminum, was one of the metals favored by designers in the period for modern, affordable designs. “Long a hallmark of traditional craft, pewter was embraced by Scandinavian designers from the 1920s as a welcome alternative to silver, with weight and warmth and a malleability that still lent itself to exquisitely crafted, decorative metalwork,” he says. “Pewter’s popularity today is likely a reflection of the continued popularity of Art Deco furniture and objects, which frequently featured the metal, and the increased interest in the Swedish Grace movement.”
The metal alloy is composed largely of tin with varying amounts of copper, antimony, bismuth, and previously, lead. “The alloy was changed to be lead-free in the 1970s, so contemporary pewter items are generally considered to be food safe,” adds Freund, who cautions that antique pewter objects are often not suitable for dining purposes.
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