GREENFIELD — Members of the community will have a chance this weekend to explore the history of a once vibrant manufacturer in town.
For 107 years, Lunt Silversmiths was a mainstay in the community, employing hundreds of residents from Greenfield and the surrounding area. The sterling flatware, silverware and gifts manufacturer filed for bankruptcy in 2009, ceasing manufacturing and selling its brand the following year.
On Saturday, the public will have a chance to experience this rich past at the Historical Society of Greenfield, during an event featuring a display of Lunt items, photos and more.
The “Lunt Silversmiths: Reflections” exhibit will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. at 43 Church St. After the event, photos and artwork will remain on display, but silver pieces will be returned to their owners.
“They were a company in town for so long … a lot of people worked at Lunt and it became, over its lifetime, an international company and big in the silver business,” said Karin Benson of the Historical Society. “Working together with Jim and Colby Lunt, who owned the business, we started developing this idea. So we’re pretty much looking at the business as it relates to the community, and that’s what the Historical Society is all about.”
The Lunt exhibit is also part of an effort by the organization to reinvigorate itself.
“We have this bigger goal of trying to organize within ourselves, but also to be available and to be available in new ways,” Benson said, adding the Historical Society now has a Facebook page and has been open to the public on Fridays since the spring. “Historical societies could be thought of by a lot of people as these sort of old, fussy attic-y collections of old stuff — but I think we could be really valuable to the town, to the school system, to anybody who’s doing any kind of research.”
Benson and Tilda Hunting, who have both served on the Historical Society’s Board of Directors for eight years, said one of the organization’s goals is education, and members have made a concerted offer to keep the museum open and more accessible to the public. They said the Historical Society is also hoping to gain more volunteers to be trained as docents.
“We were sort of stalled for about five years. We were not getting any new people, but we’ve found out that historical societies are very prone to this kind of syndrome,” Benson said. “There’s starting to be a nice little buzz about us, that there’s something different happening. I think that it’s all historical society type organizations, there’s sort of an ebb and flow.”
Benson and Hunting said part of the Lunt exhibit — including photographs and advertisements from the 1960s and 1970s — will remain on display through the winter.
“We’re hoping that workers from the plant that are still around in the area will come to this exhibit,” Hunting said.
Silver flatware and place settings will be on display Saturday, including vases, pitchers, platters and more.
“We have Christmas decorations — bells and that sort of thing they put out — and children’s things like a baby rattle,” Hunting said. “It’s a little bit of everything, and a lot of pictures with local people in them.”
Saturday’s event will include a reception with drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
The Historical Society is open on Fridays through October, and by appointment during the winter.