Hôtel Silver was founded in 1988 by Ginger Kilbane, a former fashion journalist whose obsession with European hotel silverware began in the early 1960s when breakfast arrived at her table in Italy on a silver tray. What started as a personal collection became a business, and Kilbane is credited with putting vintage European hotel silver on the map in America in the early 1990s. Today the brand is carried forward by her daughter Hilary Allinson, and spans both authenticated vintage pieces sourced from grand hotels, ocean liners, railway dining cars, and private clubs across Europe, restored and re-plated by London silversmiths.