BOSTON, MASS. -- Shreve, Crump & Low, Boston's luxury retailer, grew with the city, from a small watchmaker's shop to the region's most celebrated jewelry store.

The exhibition "Trophies and Treasures: 200 Years of Luxury at Shreve, Crump & Low," on view at the Bostonian Society Museum through July 31, 1997, celebrates the history of Shreve's and illustrates how this history and the products the store has sold reflect the taste and history of Boston.

The present-day Shreve, Crump & Low is the last of a line of firms that began with watchmaker and silversmith John McFarlane in 1796. Over the years, these firms, commonly known as Shreve's, have made silver presentation vases and dinner services to honor Boston notables and have sold trophies to the region's most prestigious sporting clubs.

Shreve's has held the most fashionable addresses, erected elegant modern buildings, presented lavish showrooms, and provided the finest of jewels, crystal, china, antiques and stationery. Through architecture, merchandise, special exhibitions and service, the company - the oldest jeweler in North America - has attracted New Englanders and led them in matters of taste.

In the 1800s, Shreve's produced numerous presentation pieces for Boston's statesmen, politicians and entrepreneurs. In 1835, the citizens of Boston honored orator and Massachusetts State Senator Daniel Webster for defending the Constitution. They did this with the gift from Shreve's of an extraordinary 400-ounce silver vase, later donated to the Boston Public Library.

In 1840, the citizens of Boston presented Samuel Cunard with a 30-inch cup, for helping to finance the Britannia, the first steamship to travel between Liverpool and Boston. In its day, the Shreve's cup was recognized as the greatest triumph in the silver worker's art as yet achieved in Boston.

In 1848, trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the citizens of Boston presented William Thomas Green Morton with a silver box for discovering ether as an anesthetic, and the children of Boston presented Civil War General George B. McClellan with a silver pitcher in 1863 in gratitude for his efforts to preserve the Union.

All of these tours de force were provided by the distinguished line of firms that, in 1869, became Shreve, Crump & Low.

Following the Civil War, Americans redirected their physical energies from martial to athletic pursuits. Baseball, running, bicycling and rowing became the rage, as did sailing, golf and fox hunting among the wealthy. A plethora of sporting clubs were established and athletic competitions organized.

In the greater Boston area, Shreve, Crump & Low provided many of the trophies. Among the clients were the Boston Yacht Club, the Eastern Yacht Club, the Winthrop Yacht Club, the Myopia Hunt Club, the Norfolk Hunt Club, and the Longwood Cricket Club. According to the local newspapers, some trophies were crafted in the firm's own silver department. Others were made by silver manufacturers in Providence, R.I.; Concord, N.H.; New York City; and Boston, Mass.

While it appears that by the 1860s Shreve's began to retail the products of New England and New York manufacturers (products of the emerging American silver industry) and generally turned away from making its own silver, the firm started to manufacture lighting fixtures in the next decades.

In 1878, the Shreve, Crump & Low Mfg Co was producing objects of brass, bronze, iron, copper and oxidized silver in the shape of bedsteads, chandeliers, brackets and other ornaments and had a factory employing more than 50 men. Among Shreve's Boston commissions were the chandelier and sounding board for Trinity Church and lighting for the new Old South Church and the Parker House Hotel.

The firm also provided lighting fixtures for businesses and residences outside of Boston. In 1887, Shreve's sold John Jacob Glessner of Chicago, Ill., 33 gas fixtures for his house, designed by Boston architect H.H. Richardson. Shreve's also furnished lighting fixtures for a gentleman's parlor in Portland, Ore.; train stations in Portland, Me., and Concord, N.H.; the First Congregational Church in Detroit, Mich.; the New England Mutual Life Building in Kansas City, Mo.; and the Providence, R.I., City Hall. In 1882, King Kalakaua of Hawaii even called upon Shreve, Crump & Low to provide lighting and decorative bric-a-brac for his Iolani Palace in Honolulu.

Along with selling jewelry, watches, silver and lighting fixtures, Shreve's has also long sold objets d'art to ornament the home. In the late 1800s, the firm carried bas reliefs in bronze and parian, English cameo crystal by Thomas Webb, Venetian glass, and Royal Worcester, Doulton, Minton and Limoges china. As American manufacturers (including Ott & Brewer and Tiffany Studios) began to produce objects of artistic merit, Shreve's also sold their wares.

In December 1875, Shreve's opened a stationery department that offered papers imported from London, Paris and Vienna. In the 1880s and 1890s, the firm advertised "Mandarin," "Crystaline," and "Japanesque" papers, "Imitation Irish Linen," wedding invitations, and visiting cards with arms, crests and heraldic designs. They also sold mourning papers (for letters of condolence) and correspondence cards from "the most famous of English houses," including: Marcus Ward & Co; Alexander Pirie & Son; T. De La Rue & Co; and Charles Goodall & Son.

In the Twentieth Century, Crane & Co of Dalton, Mass., became the source for most of Shreve's stationery. Of course, the store didn't just sell papers, it had them engraved. For more than a century, the firm has provided invitations to many of Boston's most celebrated events, including gubernatorial inaugurations, presidential luncheons and society weddings.

As residents of Boston's new Back Bay longed for European antiques to fill their French and English-inspired homes, Shreve's developed an antiques department. In its 1891 store on the Boston Common, the firm devoted a whole floor to antiques and tapestries "from all the great sources in Europe." Among the objects exhibited were a Venetian carved wood stall, a Thirteenth Century Spanish cabinet from Cadiz, Louis XIV chairs, old china and crystal, and French, Flemish and Italian tapestries.

Charles H. Crump probably did much of the buying for the antiques department. According to his 1917 obituary, half of Crump's business life had been spent in Europe, where he had "made a study of foreign works of art, especially antiques." The article reported that Crump had crossed the Atlantic 88 times and the "he was known in most of the capitals of the continent." Shreve's also developed an inventory of Americana as the taste and market for American decorative arts grew in the early years of the Twentieth Century.

In monumental buildings located in Boston's finest neighborhoods, Shreve's created an atmosphere of beauty, elegance and fantasy to draw customers and set off its merchandise to greatest advantage. The Daily Evening Transcript reported in 1850 that the store of Jones, Lows & Ball (1835-1840) was, in its day, considered "as the very ultimatum [sic] of human attainment and splendor." In 1849, Jones, Ball & Poor (1847-1852), a predecessor of Shreve's, moved into a "princely structure" at the corner of Washington and Summer Streets. Jones, Ball & Co (1852-1854) redecorated the building in 1854. According to the local press, the new interior was of "the higher grade of taste and exquisite embellishment."

The interior decoration was by a Mr De Lamano of New York, who had previously decorated the Congressional Library and the St Nicholas Hotel in Washington, D.C. Shreve's 1873 building (constructed after Boston's Great Fire of 1872) was Italian in style, with showcases of black walnut trimmed with holly and ebony. One reporter compared it to a museum of art. Shreve's 1891 building was its largest. It was six stories high of limestone and marble and in the Italian Renaissance style. In 1930, Shreve's moved into its current Art Deco "palace" on Boylston Street, in Boston's fashionable Back Bay.

Over the years, Shreve's has also held special exhibitions to introduce Bostonians to fine design and quality craftsmanship, to showcase new product lines, and to attract potential customers. Shows have presented gems direct from the 1867 Paris Exposition, Tiffany favrile glass, Chinese Export armorial porcelain, old English silver, and Grecian, Etruscan, Roman and Renaissance bronzes. The firm has also attracted attention and customers with its windows, which have featured dazzling arrays of jewels, other luxury goods, and objects of importance to the community.

Dozens of jewelry stores have come and gone in Boston over the past 20 years, including, in the Nineteenth Century, Bigelow, Kennard & Co (1830-1972) and Palmer, Bachelder & Co (1817-1888), Shreve's greatest competitors. Only Shreve's has survived.

"Trophies and Treasures" features the presentation pieces and trophies made or sold by the firm (in its many incarnations); recounts how, over the centuries, Shreve's has grown and changed with Boston; and illustrates how the firm has quietly guided New Englanders in the art of elegant living.

The society, at 206 Washington Street in the Old State House, is open Monday through Sunday, 9:30 am to 5 pm. For more information on admission and special tours, 617/720-3290.