The Kalo Shop - Tea Set, 1928

When Chicagoan Harry Logan Monroe (1869–1930), district manager for the General Electric Company, completed his 30th year with the company in September 1918, he received an elegant sterling silver tray engraved with the names of his Chicago colleagues. Handwrought at the Kalo Shop, the tray was the first of several silver sets presented to Monroe by the company before his death in 1930. The trays and hollowware display characteristics typical of Kalo silver: heavy, with softly rounded or melon-lobed bodies, half-round wires applied to scalloped rims, and a surface sheen with barely visible hammer marks.

In 1918, the Kalo Shop was the largest and most prestigious of the Chicago area shops making handwrought metalwork and jewelry favored as unique gifts for weddings, anniversaries, and other special events. Co-founded in 1900 by Clara Barck Welles and five female graduates of the School of the Art Institute, the shop started as a design studio offering leather goods, weaving, and handmade jewelry. After Welles incorporated the shop in 1905, it operated in Park Ridge as the Kalo Arts Crafts Community, selling an extensive line of crafts out of its shop in Chicago's Fine Arts Building.

Recruiting its first professional silversmith in 1907, the Kalo Shop began offering the finely crafted hammered silver tableware that soon became its hallmark. The Kalo Shop operated in Park Ridge until 1914, when Clara Welles consolidated its workshop with its retail outlet in Chicago. During World War I, with producers facing shortages of silver and of male workers, the shop relied on sales of small items crafted by a team of women designers.

Besides being an astute businesswoman who knew how to market her luxury products, Clara Welles took an active role in advancing women's suffrage and increasing their participation in the arts. Among her many activities, she headed the publicity committee of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association in 1913 and was a longtime member of the Cordon Club, an organization promoting women in the arts.

The Kalo Shop flourished in the 1920s, with Welles employing more than 30 workmen recruited from a pool of well-trained and talented Scandinavian immigrant silversmiths. Unlike many metal and jewelry shops, it survived the 1930s Depression, albeit with a skeleton crew. The shop occupied various downtown locations until 1936, when it moved to 222 S. Michigan Avenue, where it remained for 34 years.

In 1939, Welles retired to California. She gave the shop to the four remaining crafts workers in 1959: Robert Bower, shop manager; and silversmiths Yngve H. Olsson, Daniel Pederson, and Arne Myhre. They continued to produce silver in the traditional Kalo styles, along with new designs reflecting their Scandinavian heritage, until the last silversmith died in 1970.

Note: Tray Inscription: “Harry Logan Monroe / September 13, 1928/ Fortieth Anniversary/with General Electric Company/ From His Associates / (25 names)”.