About

One of Easton, Maryland’s newest best kept secrets – a curated space brimming with a rarified collection: Nymphenburg porcelain from Bavaria; Lobmeyr glass and crystal and Wiener Silber from Vienna; and Robbe & Berking silver from Flensburg, Germany. The graceful boutique, Benjamin, gleams with the quiet elegance, as refined as the wares it showcases. Its the latest enterprise in the historic Eastern Shore town, where Bluepoint Hospitality that brings together manufacturers esteemed by the world’s most discriminating collectors and households.

 

Nymphenburg porcelain, a maker founded in 1747 by the Royal Family of Bavaria [and still owned by its heirs,] creates fine dinnerware and decorative figures using painstaking techniques that have remained largely unchanged in the centuries since. From the beginning, the brand has worked with pre-eminent designers of the day — Miuccia Prada, Karl Lagerfeld, Ted Muehling — whose work endows the collections with an ongoing level of high artistry. Its finely skilled painters can customize pieces and services with personal touches and preferences. They also create the world’s most intricate floral design still in production today: “Cumberland,” first made in 1765, requires up to three weeks of painting per plate - no two of which are ever the same.

Lobmeyr, the celebrated Viennese glassware company founded in 1823 of remarkably thin glass and crystal, which had a partnership with Thomas Edison and co-developed the first electrical chandeliers in the world. It is also distinguished by its early association with the progressive designers of the Wiener Werkstatte, and the highly refined profiles of its decanters, glasses, beer mugs, and spherical candy dishes that are right at home at Benjamin.

Silver service pieces by Wiener Silber, another venerable firm, gleam with remarkable craftsmanship in a special alloy that is 94% pure. Their unique designs have evolved seamlessly through the ages with their contemporary pieces right at home next to original designs from the 1800’s, when the one-man shop began producing its exquisite silverware. They are complemented by the sleek place settings of Robbe & Berking, of northern Germany, whose more recent forays into yacht design imbue their collections with a nautical sensibility.