Oneida Community plate

View Oneida Community plate for sale at Centennial Antiques

The Oneida community was begun as a religious and communal living movement in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes near Oneida Creek, NY. The settlers sustained themselves by selling some agricultural goods, and by the 1870s, when the movement had waned, the residents were manufacturing metal spoon blanks to sell to the Meriden Britannia company for silverplating.

In 1880 Oneida Community Living was incorporated in New York and a factory was established at Niagara Falls. The first products were not of good quality but in 1901 a decision was made to produce a better line of flatware and the first examples were exhibited at the 1901 Buffalo exhibition.

Oneida Community plate silver prospered following an advertising campaign in national publications, so that by 1929 the company had acquired the brands of Kenwood Silver, Wm. A. Rogers Ltd., 1881 Rogers, and Simeon L. and George H. Rogers.

A successor to the company is still in business.

Popular patterns in Oneida Community plate silver include Adam (1917), Coronation (1936), Evening Star (1950), Morning Star (1948), White Orchid (1953), Lady Hamilton (1932) and Grosvenor (1921)

Standard references include the Encyclopedia of American Silver Manufacturers by Dorothy T. Rainwater and Judy Redfield, Silverplated Flatware by Tere Hagan, American Silverplate by Dorothy Rainwater with Donna Felger, and the Standard Encyclopedia of American Silverplate by Frances M. Bones and Lee Roy Fisher.

Below are images of a few patterns.

Oneida Community plate Coronation