A Liberty Lake business turns vintage silverware into hand-crafted jewelry and gifts, a brainchild of two women who stay rooted in friendship.

Co-owners Anna Henry, 52, and Terry Rathbun, 57, are neighbors and friends who started Roots of Silver about two years ago. Both work from their homes to craft pieces cut in custom fashion from intricately designed flatware to make them into pendants, bracelets, earrings, keychains and wine bottle tags, among other items.

Henry and Rathbun often further hand-cut within the flatware's design to bring out its features and patterns. Roots of Silver merchandise is sold through Etsy, Amazon Handmade and occasionally at shows.

Splash photo by Treva Lind

"We do what we can to bring these pieces into the future," Rathbun said. "Otherwise, they get left in a drawer and forgotten. People don't set tables like that anymore."

Added Henry, "I love the vintage nature of silverware. If you look at the artisan work, it's just beautiful."

The friends laugh frequently when describing their start and steep learning curve. A visit to The Farm Chicks Show in Spokane gets some credit for inspiration, although Rathbun wasn't too sure about attending. 

"She promised me a hot dog," Rathbun joked.

At the show, Henry bought a vintage fork stamped with "Happy Birthday," and Rathbun suggested the pair could do that on their own. But after some stamping misadventures, their efforts soon shifted mainly to crafting jewelry. They still do a bit of stamping.

"It wasn't jewelry at first; it was an attempt at stamping," Henry said. "So we go to Harbor Freight and we bought big mallets and an anvil, armed and dangerous."

"And that's not how you do it, FYI," added Rathbun.

"We kind of morphed," Henry said. "I suck at stamping. There was nothing left, so I said, ‘OK, there has to be a way.' So I cut it. Terry said, ‘Really, you did that?'"

Rathbun joked about early on getting impaled by a drill bit. 

"I thought I did, but I didn't," she said, adding that a tiny piece of metal got in her eye and later came out without injury. That's when a neighbor gave her a heavy-duty apron. 

"Now, I wear full-body armor: a safety mask like welders wear, the apron and heavy gloves," she said. "Metal gets really hot when you cut it."

Today, Roots of Silver sells items that range from elaborate pendants to writing pens that are crafted from the handles of knives. Even antique sugar tongs get renewed life in their hands. 

"It's not just a matter of dividing a piece up and calling it good," Henry said. "The work requires taking it and you hand-cut around the patterns. When I take a piece and work on it, my husband says, ‘How did you see that in that?'"

Added Rathbun, "The trick is seeing the patterns, and then cutting them. We say, how can we modify this to make people see how beautiful this pattern is?" 

Early on, the pair started a Facebook page under the name Slightly Tarnished.

"We had a group of people who followed us with that name, but our business name is Roots of Silver," Henry said. "There was already someone with Slightly Tarnished as a business name when we started on Etsy."

The owners primarily work with silver-plated flatware, and a few sterling silver pieces. Typically, the flatware has a silver layer over a metal. 

"It can be nickel, brass, sometimes it's over zinc," Rathbun said. "It depends on what part of the world they're from."

They've worked with flatware originally made in Russia, Poland and Sweden, among examples. Swedish designs tend to have intricate swirls. European pieces are typically electroplated nickel silver, they said. 

Henry and Rathbun came to Roots of Silver with different work backgrounds. Rathbun retired from Charles Schwab the end of 2013. Henry still works in a separate business she owns doing technical writing, marketing and communication. They met originally at a neighborhood block party and learned how much they have in common, including both of their husbands are named Mark.

"We do bounce ideas off each other," Henry said. "We look at things similarly, but opposite. If we were each given the same piece, it would look totally different. That's kind of the fun of it."

She and Henry find flatware at estate sales, vintage stores and some thrift shops. Certain ones date back to the 1800s, but Rathbun added that they mostly look for any flatware that has interesting patterns. Roots of Silver does some projects by request for families.

"I'm doing pieces for a family in Seattle, so they'll all wear them as pendants made from their grandmother's vintage spoons," Rathbun said.

Roots of Silver has almost tripled sales on Etsy when compared with its launch about two years ago. The business just started listing items at Amazon Handmade. 

"I don't think you'd know it was silverware," Henry said. "The hard part is when you really love a piece and someone buys it."

"People are slightly wary of us at dinner parties," Rathbun added, with a laugh. "Don't bring out the good stuff."

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Liberty-Lake based business selling jewelry and gifts made from vintage silverware

Shop: www.etsy.com/shop/rootsofsilver or www.amazon.com/handmade/rootsofsilver

Contact: Rootsofsilver@gmail.com