A silver anniversary in San Francisco.(silverware exhibition )

Twenty-five years ago, a ramshackle pier in San Francisco Bay, empty, save for some enterprising seagulls that had taken up residence inside, hardly seemed an auspicious location for an antiques show. Nonetheless, Mrs. Benjamin H. Rose III decided to look beyond the broken windows, leaky roof, and any other shortcomings of the location and soldier forward. She found antiques and art dealers across the nation and in Europe willing to take a risk, and in the autumn of 1981 the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show was born. Today the Fort Mason Center on that pier offers one of the most beautiful settings in this country for an antiques show. Mrs. Rose, who has volunteered countless hours organizing this nationally recognized antiques show for all of its twenty-five years, is retiring at the end of this year.

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Since its inception the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show has benefited a local nonprofit organization called Enterprise for High School Students, and each year the show features a loan exhibition and lectures as part of its educational mission. This year the show, which is on view from October 26 to 29, will include a loan exhibition devoted, appropriately for its twenty-fifth anniversary, to commemorative and presentation silver. Entitled Celebrating with Silver: The 25th Anniversary of the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show, the exhibition includes loans primarily from California collections. The curator is Michael Weller, and Martin Chapman, curator of European ...