During the 1930s, homemakers who took their entertaining duties seriously all clamored for chrome tableware items made by the Chase Brass & Copper Company. The objects—everything from nut bowls, candy dishes and serving trays to toothpick holders—were sold in special Chase displays within large department stores, and no less a tastemaker than Emily Post herself promoted the Chase items in her 1935 book, How to Give Buffet Suppers. Today, Chase chrome tableware objects are highly sought after as icons of modernism.

“The Chase chrome items are very popular with beginning Art Deco collectors and with more serious collectors as well,” says Mitch Hazam, proprietor, with his wife, Amy, of Vintage Swank (vintageswank.com), a Virginia-based dealer of vintage clothing and furniture. Chase chrome tableware is particularly appealing to beginning collectors because the objects carry an easily recognizable mark—a centaur plus the word Chase—and because small Chase pieces are still easy to find and affordable.

Chase items were notable in the 1930s in large part because the company sought designs by top talents of the day, including Russel Wright. The 1935 Chase chrome toothpick holder is a Wright design. The Chase chrome objects often featured bakelite handles.

Chase chrome tableware items range in price today from $30 to $200; the Russel Wright toothpick holder, for example, typically sells between $85 and $120. A Chase chrome table bell with a bakelite handle sells for $110.

Hazam says collectors buy Chase chrome tableware to use it and display it. “It has a streamlined look, so it looks great in a number of settings—everyday, modern, or Art Deco,” says Hazam.

For more information about Chase chrome tableware, a good reference is Chase Complete: Deco Specialties of the Chase Brass & Copper Company by Donald-Brian Johnson and Leslie A. Pina (Schiffer, 1999).

PHOTO COURTESY OF VINTAGE SWANK