For a moment, I thought I was looking at something by Henning Koppel. What I had spotted was a gorgeous Modernist tea and coffee service, voluptuously shaped and shining like new moonlight. Knowing that what I was seeing couldn't be Koppel (not in this town, not in that dealer's booth), I picked up the teapot and had myself a peek.

I almost dropped my teeth; it was by my mom's favorite middle-of-the-road silver manufacturer, Reed & Barton- and it was pewter. Neither the dealer nor anyone else had any idea when it was made, or who designed it; all this was six or seven years ago, before the Internet made it easy to identify obscure stuff.

Since that day, I've not only acquired the service I saw (I'm a tea maven, anyway), I found out who designed it and when, and I've had the pleasure of interviewing him by telephone. As they used to say in bad TV scripts- THIS (dramatic pause!) Is His Story.

The pieces were by American-born, Danish-trained John Prip, and he designed them for Reed & Barton in 1958, along with several other designs in the same Scandinavian Modernist vein. Prip was Designer-in-Residence at R & B; he had been brought on board full-time after his 'Lark' flatware design had become a solid success for the company. Prip later cut back his involvement with R & B to half-time, so that he might teach at the Rhode Island School of Design. His ties to the school continue to this day.

Prip was and is a believer that to design in metal, one must work in metal, so his students are taught to hammer and form, planish and polish. His experience with R & B made it clear to him that too many designers were content to draw pretty things and leave the frustrating details of execution to others; he found that this approach raised costs and lowered quality.

Prip's major contributions to the R & B line include my tea and coffee service, which was made in both pewter and silverplate, the "Lark" and "Dimension" flatware patterns, and a line of silverplate serving pieces lined in colored enamel. All these works have a Danish Modern feeling. Prip is also often credited with working on R & B's "Diamond" flatware, but in a telephone interview, John Prip told me it simply isn't true.

R & B kept the tea service in its line from 1958 to 1977, a pretty spectacular run for a Modernist design that appealed only to those with a taste for formal living. I think that now is the time to stock up on Prip; his simple biomorphic forms and R & B's high standards of manufacturing make these pieces a terrific bet for future collectibility.

You can't say nobody told you!

Buying Guide: Prip's pieces for R & B aren't marked with his name; pewter ones say only "Reed & Barton Pewter" and then have a model number beginning with "P". These pieces never had names, only model numbers, in accordance with R & B's usual practice for holloware. The letter "P" stands for "pewter", not "Prip", so don't be fooled by a dealer's claims that some foofy piece is by this designer. Silverplate pieces have only a number and the R & B name. Pewter pieces that are gently dented can be a good buy; you can often work the pewter back into shape with your bare hands. Don't buy dented pieces that have creases in the dents; these need expensive professional restoration. People who do basketry can help you with damaged wicker handles. Pass up silverplate pieces in need of replating and those that have damaged enamel- there are too many good ones around to spend money on repairing scruffy examples.