SPOON

A Post Medieval cast copper alloy spoon. The spoon bowl is fig-shaped, and crescentic in profile. The lower edge of the bowl is slightly abraded. The upper edge has a broken edge just below where the stem would have been. This break is not recent. There is a maker's mark on the upper edge of the bowl, which is a five-petalled flower within a beaded border. The centre of the flower is composed of a small cluster of pellets. The surface of the spoon has an incomplete white metal alloy coating with traces of a well developed mid-dark green patina, particularly on the exterior apex of the bowl which may also be due to wear. In the well of the spoon bowl there is a patch of active corrosion which may be due to an original deposit on the spoon when still in use. The bowl measures 61.87mm long and 48.92mm wide across the bowl. It weighs 21g.

Geake (Geake, H. 2001 Finds Recording Guide Version 1.1 p. 76) comments that spoons with maker's marks date to the second half of the 16th and 17th century. Egan (Egan, G. 2005 Material Culture in London in an Age of Transition MoLAS Monograph 19) illustrates similar shaped spoons made from pewter and copper alloy (Nos. 527-585), commenting that the Pewterers' Guild since the 1560s had tried to prevent copper alloy spoons being made, which worked quite well until the late 17th century (p. 117). A spoon is illustrated in Egan (ibid) which has a very similar makers mark, No. 580 and this spoon is dated between c. 1650 and c. 1700.