[单项选择]

As the merchant class expanded in the eighteenth-century North American colonies, the silver- smith and the coppersmith businesses rose to serve it. Only a few silversmiths were available in New York or Boston in the late seventeenth century, but in the eighteenth century they could be found in all major colonial cities. No other colonial artisans rivaled the silversmiths’ prestige. They handled the most expensive materials and possessed direct connections to prosperous colonies merchants. Their products, primarily silver plates and bowls, reflected their exalted status and testified to their customers’ prominence.
Silver stood as one of the surest ways to store wealth at a time before neighborhood banks existed. Unlike the silver coins from which they were made, silver articles were readily identifiable. Of- ten formed to individual specifications, they always carried the silversmith’s distinctive markings and consequently could be traced and retrieved.
A. unusual.
B. prominence.
C. high.
D. superior.