Henri Anton Eicher - Coffee Service, 1915-1923

Made in Park Ridge by Henri Anton Eicher, the Kalo Shop's first silver-smith foreman, this handwrought silver coffee set displays classic Park Ridge-era Kalo characteristics: softly hammered surfaces, paneled bodies, rectangular handles, half-round wire outlining rims, and an applied mono-gram that personalized the set for the owner.

The Swiss-born Eicher, his future wife Asta, and her mother immigrated in 1907 from Copenhagen, Denmark, where he had worked as a silversmith. Joining the Kalo Shop in 1909 as manager of its silversmiths, Eicher established a studio workshop in his Park Ridge garage and barn, where he and other Kalo silversmiths worked in their off-hours. The barn/workshop also served as an incubator for the Randahl Shop, the Volund Shop, and Eicher's own business, H. A. Eicher, which he established in 1915.

Sterling silver items produced in Eicher's shop included tea and coffee services, water pitchers, fluted bowls, salad servers, bread trays, and vases, as well as cufflinks and other small jewelry items. He is also known to have made a silver chalice for St. Mary's Catholic Church in Park Ridge. Eicher displayed his handwrought sterling silverware in a showroom in the Heyworth Building in Chicago, where he retained a manufacturer's agent to sell the goods to jewelers and specialty shops throughout the country.

Eicher, assisted by four to six part-time silversmiths, executed silver pieces designed by Asta until about 1919, when he developed mental illness. After his death in 1923, Asta retained the shop's silversmiths for several years, before closing the studio and executing silver work on commission for the Kalo Shop.

In 1931, her resources depleted, Asta became entangled with a confidence man who posed as a wealthy suitor during their brief mail-order courtship. Assuming that Asta was rich, he lured her and her three children to West Virginia, where he murdered the whole family. The sensational trial of the "Bluebeard of Clarksburg" made headlines around the world.