Silver Streak
His muscled arms and steady squint tell the story--of a life spent hunkered at a table, pounding silver. Yet Allan Adler’s tale is full of romance and high adventure: Nearly 60 years ago, he fell in love--with a woman and with the craft her father practiced. Her father, Porter Blanchard, an eighth-generation silversmith, hired Adler as an apprentice, then after World War II, Adler went into business on his own. Before long, he was making silver for the Hollywood crowd, including Paul Newman and Katharine Hepburn, and designing pins for NASA astronauts. And his career continued to soar: At one time available at Neiman Marcus, Gump’s and Marshall Field, Adler silver is now featured at Geary’s in Beverly Hills, his design studio in Studio City and his store in Corona del Mar. And one line of his flatware, “Town and Country,” is now sold exclusively through Gucci stores. “My competitors have mostly died,” jokes the 81-year-old artisan. “Of course, death just makes your work more valuable!”
Wry, impassioned, realistic, Adler is clear about his craft’s demands: “You’ve got to be good with your hands, patient, have an eye for design and the sense to know when something’s finished. A fine line makes good design.”
Though his father-in-law crafted silver in the American Colonial style, Adler’s designs are sleek and modern, “with no doodads.” His work for Gucci has a trademark simplicity. So do his other lines of flatware, cups, bowls and jewelry. Unlike the largely machine-stamped silver of today, pieces by Adler and his staff of 10 are almost entirely handcrafted, with mechanization reserved for minor finishing tasks such as buffing. An Adler gravy boat that required as many as 20 man-hours might cost $985, he says, but it will also increase in value and grow more lustrous with the years.
The same has been true of Adler’s talent. He still works full time and dreams up new ideas, such as a candelabrum inspired by a tree he noticed while hiking. Meanwhile, though silversmiths are, he says, “rare beasts and getting rarer,” his 23-year-old grandson has joined him as an apprentice and will eventually, Adler hopes, fill his shoes. But for Adler, who must return now to pounding out spoons, that’s a story for another time.
