Beautiful By Candlelight (at Forbes.com)

Forbes Magazine dated October 27, 2008 Collectors of silver enjoy a kinship with J.P. Morgan, William Randolph Hearst and other bygone candelabra kings In a unique example of a man's taking his work home with him, mining magnate John W. Mackay in 1877 shipped a half-ton of silver from his mines in Virginia City, Nev. to Tiffany & Co. (nyse: ) in New York, with instructions it be fashioned into a dinner and dessert service for his wife. A year and perhaps a million man- hours later, 200 Tiffany craftsmen had wrought a 1,250-piece setting that one historian calls "the largest, the grandest, the most elegantly ornate and most famous" silver service of its age. (Part of it can be seen today in Reno, at the University of Nevada's W.M. Keck Museum.) In 1998 a single punch bowl (with ladle) from the set sold at auction for $222,500.... [read full story]