GREENFIELD - After 107 years as a Greenfield manufacturer, Lunt Silversmiths agreed Wednesday to become strictly a design and product development business, its president, James Lunt, announced Wednesday.

With just half a dozen employees remaining of a workforce that numbered 124 in the early part of the decade, its parent company - Rogers, Lunt and Bowlen - agreed Wednesday to sell the Lunt brand to its 175-year-old, Taunton-based competitor, Reed and Barton. Its supply of silver giftware and other inventory will be sold to Reed and Barton.

What will remain in Greenfield is Rogers, Lunt and Bowlen, which was formed by James Lunt's great-grandfather. James Lunt hopes eventually to move into the 13,000-square-foot Lunt Design Center on Norwood Street. That $3 million building, now most recently used for warehousing and shipping millions of dollars in inventory, was built in 1996 to herald the company's foray into direct retailing in the style of Yankee Candle Co. The effort, with an in-store restaurant, closed four years later.

"We have not escaped the world's economic crises at all," Lunt said, describing sales figures in 2008 that were only about 70 percent of what they had been in 2007. In addition to declining sales, the company faced a quadrupling of silver prices and extremely tight credit markets.

The firm laid off a dozen factory and office workers in August, after going to a four-day work week this spring, with its typical summertime furlough extended indefinitely. Those workers, some of whom had worked for the company for more than 30 years, have been waiting to be paid for vacation and personal time owed and had filed claims with the state attorney general's office, some workers said.

"We, in fact, seem to be the last silversmith left in the United States," said Lunt, as he announced that his company would now be a "product and market development" company, focused on marketing rather than manufacturing. Reed and Barton, which will own the Lunt brand name, is not a domestic manufacturer.

"We just couldn't compete globally, and as hard as we tried, it's clear that it's just about an impossible task," said Lunt.

For the first 80 of its 107 years in business, Lunt said, Lunt did all of its own manufacturing, but by last year only 60 percent of its products were manufactured in Greenfield, with the rest being made around the world.

Lunt said that with the sale to Reed and Barton approved - with final papers expected to be signed by the end of the year - the company will make the payments to laid-off workers for vacation and personal time, totaling about $120,000, "either today or tomorrow." The company will terminate health benefits to its laid-off employees on Nov. 30, Lunt said, but has agreed to provide them with any gap between then and Jan. 1 when their own private health policies begin.

The company owes nearly $62,890 in back taxes to the town, and Lunt said it's still possible that it could pursue bankruptcy proceedings, which it has been considering as it tries to deal with creditors.

Lunt said he also began discussion with Mayor William Martin about the future of the company's roughly 60,000 square feet of office and factory space along Federal Street between Norwood and Kenwood streets.

"We're studying a variety of ways we could look at it," said Lunt, but in any case, a brownfields assessment and possibly remediation would be needed to meet requirements of lenders.

Lunt said he had spent recent months trying to find "suitors" to invest in the company. As a design and market development company, Lunt said, he hopes to eventually hire workers who can continue to create products for Tiffany and sell others to Cartier and Oscar de la Renta. All will be manufactured elsewhere, and likely outside this country, said Lunt.