Beautiful Antique 7 Piece Theodore B Starr Silverplate Tea Service Set

  
We go to estate sales regularly and come across a wide array of unique and rare items. We add to our growing online inventory daily. We also have a growing customer wish list. We'd be honored to add you to our customer wish list. We ask what we consider to be a fair price for anything we sell and understand that our idea of a fair price may be someone else's'that's too much' price.

If that's the case, feel free to make us an offer and will consider it. We also have sales regularly, so check back often.

There is always a Sale by TheBay! Now onto the item for sale. If you have any questions, or would like additional pictures, please feel free to message us and we will be happy to get back to you.

For sale is an outstanding seven piece silver on copper, silverplate tea service set made by Theodore B. Starr in New York, NY. We aren't sure as to the exact year this excellent set was made, but we know for sure that it is 99 to 123 years old. Starr is more well known for the sterling silver his company produced. His sterling silver tea sets are readily available on here and other sites and sell for several thousand dollars and up.

However, his silverplate tea sets are far more scarce and rarely come up for sale. This matching tea service set includes a tilting tea pot with stand and burner/warmer, a large and medium teapot, a sugar bowl, creamer, waste bowl and large tray.

The burner has a hinged top with a small handle for easy reach under the tilting teapot. It doesn't have a wick, but has a 1/4 diameter hole in the center. All of the pieces, less the tilting teapot, are footed and all three teapots have hinged lids with the sugar bowl having a removable lid. All of the pieces, less the tilting teapot stand and burner/warmer, have the same company hallmark. We gave this set a quick polish to give you an idea of its 100+ year condition.

It could still use a more thorough polish to get some of the thicker patina spots out, but we'll let the next owner take care of that if they wish to do so. Truth be told, each piece had quite the tarnish so it was time consuming to polish all of the pieces, but we did more than 90% of the work. We looked each piece over a few times after polishing and this set is still in very respectable antique condition after 100 or more years with the exception of a few things that we'll describe below. The silverplating on every piece, less most of the tray, is still in excellent condition and we didn't see any pitting. There is still some really slight tarnish spots in several areas, but these will certainly come out with a more thorough polishing. There are obviously some light scratches on the pieces, but that would be expected from a silverplate tea set that is older than most people alive today. The first thing we noticed was a dent on two of the teapots. These could be worked out, but the next owner would need to find someone with the proper expertise to do so. One dent is on the bottom curved edge of the tilting teapot and above the flat bottom.

The other dent is at the base of the curved shoulder of the larger teapot. We took a picture of both dents and included them above. We also noticed that some of the underlying copper showing through ever so slightly on part of the shoulder on the same teapot with the dent. As you can see in the pictures above, the handle still rests in place without falling off, but it will need to be properly reattached. We trust it can be, but again, the next owner would need to find a person with the expertise to do it properly.

The final issue with this set, as you have seen in the pictures above, is that they tray could use some tlc. The tray looked far worse when we got this set than it does now, so it did clean up pretty well despite the remaining issues. It isn't the worst tray we've ever seen, but it does have some pitting in some areas and small areas where some of the silverplate has worn off.

As you can also see, there are several green patina spots. They originally had paper fibers attached to several of them, so we assume some kind of paper product was left on this tray, got moist and corroded the silverplate. Although hard to see in the pictures, a couple areas of the sculpted border on the tray have something similar to grains of sand atop the metal. We trust that is some kind of corrosion as well. The tray could certainly be restored and re-plated with silver again, but it will certainly clean up better with a proper cleaning.

A polishing and/or buffing wheel with some silver polish would make cleaning up this set much easier and faster and the set would look even better upon completion. All in all, this set is in excellent, antique condition and would look incredible after a bit more elbow grease and a few minor repairs. The footed tray weighs more than 10 pounds and stretches 28 5/8" across the handles and 18 1/8" from side to side at the center points while standing 2 5/16 tall at the center of the handles which is the tallest point of the tray. If you would like dimensions of any of the other pieces, we will be happy to provide them upon request. However, we calculated the cost for California which is the furthest point from us in the continental U.

Thanks for looking and God bless!