Robert Wallace is considered the first metalsmith to make a spoon out of German silver, which is also known as nickel silver, even though its principal component is copper and it contains no silver at all. That was in 1835; by 1855 Wallace was doing business as Robert Wallace & Co., and the firm was renamed R. Wallace & Sons in 1871, when it introduced three lines of sterling silver flatware—Hawthorne, The Crown, and St. Leon.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Wallace was producing a wide range of flatware and hollowware, both in sterling and silverplate, as well as items such as souvenir spoons and pin cushion holders. By the 1930s, William Warren was the most influential designer at Wallace. His famous series of six so-called three-dimensional flatware patterns ranged from Rose Point (1934) to Grande Baroque (1941) to Romance of the Sea (1951). In 1956, the company was renamed again, this time as Wallace Silversmiths, and it was owned by the Hamilton Watch Company from 1959 to 1983.