The Silver Teaspoon
This post is part of a series called A history of the world in 100 everyday antiques. My goal is to tell the stories of 100 “everyday antiques” that you could have in your home for under £100. This is a story about a teaspoon I just used to make some coffee.
Coffee time
Making my morning coffee has become an important daily ritual now that I’m working from home. I have quite simple tastes when it comes to coffee (generic Italian Lavazza) and as long as it’s strong I don’t really mind how it’s made. But I quickly found that the whole home-coffee-making process lacked glamour. It’s a moment in my day that’s truly self indulgent and I want it to feel that way.
Casting around for something that might inject some sophistication into the ceremony (a special cup perhaps?) I hit upon something that has given me a daily dose of happiness ever since. Up until this point I’d just been grabbing any old spoon or scoop to shift and stir my coffee. I’d been missing a trick. What I needed wan’t a special cup, but a special spoon.
As an antiques geek I’m a bit weird like this, but I’m the sort of person who has a bunch of different aged cutlery about the place — stuff that’s often the same price as the new equivalent, but better made and more fun to use because it comes with a story. So I focussed on the higher end of my collection and pulled out a spoon that I love. It’s over 200 years old and worth about £10.
Ok, yeah, expensive as teaspoons go, but wait till you hear its story! It brings me real delight to handle this little bit of history as part of my daily routine.
Introducing: The Georgian Silver Fiddle Pattern Teaspoon
My silver teaspoon was hand-made in London in 1810 by Mary and Eliza Sumner, a mother and daughter team. They operated as specialist spoon makers in Clerkenwell and were only active between 1809 and 1813 (more on this later…)
On any bit of silver these basic facts are really easy to discover. All antique English silver is stamped with “hallmarks” that tell you where and when it was made. You can look them up online:
The Lion tells you it’s silver. The kings’s head tells you that the taxes on that bit of silver have been paid to the king (George III) and the date letter “P” tells you it’s 1810. And the maker’s stamp “M.S E.S” tells you who made it.
And if you’re feeling brave then you can test that it’s been hand made by giving it a little bend. If it’s hand made then it will feel taught and spring back. If it’s been machine made it will just bend and not come back. Machines for mass manufacture of silver cutlery were not established until around 1840.
Women silversmiths
It was unusual but not unknown for women to be working in silver manufacturing in 1810. Silver smithing often ran in families, with daughters of silver smiths training with their fathers and then marrying other silver smiths. Often widows would emerge as independent crafts-people after the death of their husband.
Mary and Eliza Sumner were the widow and daughter of a silversmith and they clearly shared in his craft and helped run the workshop. William Sumner died in 1807 and the partnership of Mary and Eliza was established in 1809 to continue running the business. You can find an archive of known women silver smiths of the period here — the most well known is Hester Bateman, whose work is highly collectable.
In London (and Clerkenwell)
In 1810 London had a population of over 1 million and was probably the biggest city in the world (along with Beijing). When this spoon was made London was a buzzing global hub of trade, fashion and money.
Mary and Eliza Sumner ran their workshop out of an address at 1 Clerkenwell Close — nestled between two rowdy pubs and facing the newly rebuilt St James Church. In 1810 Clerkenwell was an area known for specialist craftspeople such as silversmiths, locksmiths and jewellers. But it was a pretty rough area. Later in the 19th century Charles Dickens chose Clerkenwell as the home of Fagin and the Artful Dodger — it had some of the highest pickpocketing and murder rates in London.
Design
This spoon is designed in the “fiddle” pattern — literally the shape of the handle looks a bit like a fiddle (or violin). Whilst this is a classical design (you can see a Roman-era example in the British Museum) in the modern era this cutlery shape comes to Britain from France in about 1800.
In London in 1810 (despite the Napoleonic wars raging between Britain and France) the height of fashion was to look French. Aristocrats and their craftsmen fleeing from the social upheaval of the French Revolution (the French king was executed in 1793) came to London, along with their visual language of “Empire Style” Neo-Classicism. The classically-inspired fiddle shape was the cutlery fashion in France throughout the late 1700s.
The key elements of the fiddle pattern are the strong “fiddle” shape at the top of the handle (which makes it sit comfortably on your finger as you use it) and the stylised “shoulders” that sweep out up near the bowl of the spoon. If you really want to geek out on the Fiddle pattern the shape of the “fiddle” on the handle changes depending on where the spoon was made — the proportions of an Edinburgh handle are different from a London one for example.
The fiddle pattern was popular in Britain from about 1800 until trends shifted in the second half of the 19th century. It was preceded by the much simpler “Old English” pattern, which was fashionable from around 1760 and is still made today (unlike the fiddle pattern).
Tea drinking
Whilst I’m using this spoon for coffee, its original job was making tea. Tea has been imported to Britain since the 1660s. But by 1810 tea had already moved from an elite luxury to being part of everyday life in Britain. So naturally the wealthy wanted to continue to elevate its status and make their tea drinking more sophisticated.
This led to ever more elaborate social ceremony around tea preparation and drinking along with the mass production in Britain of fashionable porcelain tea services. Here’s my teaspoon it its more natural habitat, with a neoclassical shaped tea cup of the same period.
Fun tea fact: up until this point most tea services had been mass produced in China and imported to Britain. In China they did not make tea in tea pots and they had no concept of the British taste for sugar and milk in tea. But such is the power of global commerce that Chinese factories quickly invented receptacles for these purposes and included them in the Chinese manufactured tea sets being exported to the European market.
A bit more about the Regency period
In 1810 when this spoon was first bought (probably as part of a set) the wealthy in Britain were living lives of decadent excess, in stark contrast to the labourers fuelling the Industrial revolution. Whilst the royal court of the Prince of Wales (the Prince Regent) was leading fashion and taste the Industrialisation of Britain was in full boom. The first steam engines and gas street lighting came in at around the time this spoon was made.
In 1810 Britain is still at war with Napoleonic France. In 1805 Nelson had defeated a French invasion of Britain at the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1815 the Duke of Wellington’s forces would fully defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.
Get more geeky about old spoons
If you’ve enjoyed this story about my teaspoon and you’re inspired to learn more about old cutlery then you should definitely consider finding a copy of “Silver Flatware” by Ian Pickford, published by the Antique Collectors Club. It’s mega geeky but a very good guide if you’re looking to explore this world in more detail.
More stories like this
Thanks so much for reading this story about an old spoon! It’s a bit of an experiment so I’d really appreciate your comments and feedback.
This post is part of a series called A history of the world in 100 everyday antiques. My goal is to tell the stories of 100 “everyday antiques” that you could have in your home for under £100.
