The things you find at the flea-market, eh? Secondhand jeans, old books, records, kids’ toys, jewelry, furniture, household kitsch, 17th century silverware!…

Wait what?

Mmmhmm!!

Pay attention, kids, and you really can find just about anything!

I picked up this, at-first, extremely unassuming spoon at the flea-market for slightly-more than mere pocket-change. The dealer knew little-enough about it, and a lot of that was sheer guesswork on his part. He believed it could be extremely old, made of silver, likely English…and…that…was really the fullest extent of his knowledge. And because of that, he let me have it cheap!

Looking for more information, I sought the opinion of other antiques dealers at the market, and they were all of the opinion that the shape, style, condition of the silver, and other indicators (I’ll get to those in a minute, I promise!) all pointed to this being a very, very, very old – likely English – solid silver spoon, dating to the last decade of the 17th century – something which I more-or-less confirmed from subsequent research when I got home. That being the case, I dated this spoon to around 1698. Of course, I don’t know this for absolute-certainty (nobody can, it’s impossible!) but the clues to its age are there, if you know where, and how to look.

That officially (or unofficially) makes this humble, battered, worn-out old spoon – of unknown history and provenance – to be the oldest piece of silver in my collection, and the oldest antique I’ve ever personally held! And in this posting, we’ll explore how that conclusion was reached.

Building a Backstory for the Spoon

Researching this spoon was unlike anything I’d ever done before when it comes to a piece of antique silverware, and that’s all due to the condition of the spoon itself.

By laws passed centuries ago – all the way back in 1300 – all English silver MUST be sterling-standard (that’s 925 parts per 1,000, or 92.5% purity of silver by weight). And, by law, all English (and later, British) silver MUST be hallmarked before it may be sold to the public.

To hallmark silver, you – as the silversmith or goldsmith – had to take your piece of silver (like…I dunno…a spoon!) to the Goldsmith’s Hall in London, where it would be assayed (tested), marked (certified) and then returned to the silversmith.

Because of this, every single piece of English silver or gold has a set of hallmarks on it. Typically four: A fineness mark (to prove that it’s sterling silver), a date-mark (to prove when it was made), an assay mark (to prove which assay-hall tested the silver) and finally – a maker’s mark (to prove who made it). These marks changed over time, but it’s almost always these four marks.

Because of this, almost every piece of English silver may be cross-referenced with the records of hallmarks, to determine who made it, when it was made, where, and what of.

Unfortunately, in 1681, the Goldsmiths’ Hall in London burned to the ground…which took thousands of hallmark-records along with it…whoops!

Fortunately, such a calamity has never happened since, but that does mean that you can’t accurately date a piece of English silver before the 1680s.

That aside, you’d think that finding out how old this spoon was, would be easy! Right?

Well, ordinarily – yes. A spoon like this would absolutely have to have been marked and assayed by the office before it was legal to sell.

And it was.

But, 320+ years of holding, touching, rubbing, polishing, washing and cleaning have completely obliterated the hallmarks which would originally have been stamped firmly into the back of the handle, using four steel punches and a hammer! Which means that those marks would’ve been punched DEEP into the silver. But the march of Old Father Time has completely erased all the marks, wearing down the silver so much that only the merest ghosts of what were once hallmarks, are visible today.

Well – that’s unfortunate. But the fact that you can tell that the marks were once there – even if they can’t be read – is good news – because it means that this truly is a piece of silverware, and not just a tin can someone cut into the shape of a spoon. Also – rubbed-out hallmarks are not uncommon. It happens when the marks are either poorly struck to begin with, or were simply rubbed out from overzealous cleaning over a long period of time.

The Power of Deduction

It was Sherlock Holmes who said that it was “a capital mistake to theorise in advance of the facts. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts!”

And the man was right. So, with no hallmarks to speak of (or at least, none which were useful to us), how to determine the age of the spoon?

Well, we had to go with what we could see, and deduce from that, the age.

The first major clue to the spoon’s age was it’s mere condition. The business-end was very, very thin – the result of centuries of scraping, cleaning, polishing and washing. The left edge of the spoon (which would contact the plate or bowl, if you were using it in your right hand) was very worn, and had significantly less silver on it than the right side of the spoon. This imbalance in the shape of the bowl tells us that it has seen a very hard, long and heavily-used life – something that only happens from centuries of wear and tear.

The next thing to look at was the construction of the spoon.

The underside of the bowl has a long tang which stretches from the end of the handle, under the bowl and almost to the end of it. Early spoons could suffer from structural issues, due to poor soldering, etc. To reinforce the joint between the bowl, and the handle, more silver was added in this area, resulting in that tang, better known in collecting circles as a “rat’s tail”.

The presence of the “rat-tail” proved that this spoon was very old – rattail spoons were a very old style, and would’ve largely disappeared by the late Georgian, and certainly by the Victorian era. Some spoons did still have them at that time, but by then, the rat’s tail was for decorative, rather than structural purposes. This tail, because of its size and thickness, was clearly meant to be a practical feature, rather than decorative, making the spoon an older, early 1700s or late 1600s piece.

Reading the Clues

The next indicator of the spoon’s age was the presence (on the back of the ‘terminal’, or end of the handle) of initials which had been engraved into the metal – “A.H.” – clearly those of the original owner’s. On their own, their significance doesn’t mean much – we’ll never know who “A.H.” was. But the fact that they were included on the spoon is another indicator of how old they are.

These days, if someone gave you a silver spoon, you would hardly think of engraving your initials on it, would you? I mean, why would you bother? Spoons are so common nowadays.

But that was not the case 300, 400 and 500 (and more) years ago.

In medieval times, it was common for people to eat food with a knife, and their hands. Spoons were rare, and difficult to make (remember the rat’s tail reinforcement to stop the spoon from snapping in half?). Cheap spoons were made of wood. You could also get a spoon made of copper (poisonous), pewter (poisonous), or silver (expensive!). Since spoons were so expensive and hard to make, you were only ever likely to own one – and because of this, it became the custom for a family to gift a newborn child their own personal spoon upon the occasion of their birth, or baptism, since it signified the most important operation required for life – eating!

This is the origin of the expression of being “born with a silver spoon in your mouth”.

As silver spoons were the most expensive, they were considered enormous status-symbols. A person who was gifted a silver spoon carried it for their entire lives, and to prevent theft and aid in identification, the spoons were often engraved with their initials, and sometimes, another identifier (like their date of birth, or something).

This practice of carrying your personal silver spoon everywhere you went (you never expected somebody else to just…give you a spoon!) lasted for centuries, and didn’t die out until the 1700s, when forks started becoming more commonplace after their on-again-off-again use in the 1600s.

The fact that this spoon has been engraved with someone’s initials would suggest that it came from a time when personal-use spoons were still a big part of dining culture, which would further point to the fact that it came from an earlier time.

The End of it All

Yet another indicator of the spoon’s age comes from yet another stylistic choice used in its construction:

The terminal.

The ‘terminal’ is the name given for that fancy thing at the end of the handle. It’s the decorative part that makes the spoon stand out. Some common terminals are King’s Pattern, Hannoverian, Fiddleback, etc.

This terminal is known, rather cutely, as a “dog’s nose”. I mean, you can kind of see the resemblance.

Dog-nose terminals did not last very long. From the last decade of the 17th century through to the first decade of the 18th century. A period of, at most, maybe 25 years, which really narrows down just how old this spoon might be.

Rule Britannia

The last final, possible, nugget of information that tells us how old the spoon is, comes from the ghosts of hallmarks left behind on the back of the handle.

As I said earlier – All English silver HAS to be hallmarked with FOUR hallmarks:

The date-letter, the assay mark, fineness mark, and maker’s mark.

Of these four marks, only two of them are half-visible. The only two which would help in dating would be the date-letter, and the fineness mark. The date-letter is nowhere to be seen (or at least, not in its entirety), but one other mark is (just) visible – and it may well be the fineness mark.

The traditional fineness mark on British silverware is the “Lion Passant” – or “Passing Lion” – specifically, a lion passing to the left. If you see this mark, it means that the metal is 925 sterling silver.

However, this was not always the case.

In the late 1600s and very early 1700s, for a very short period of time, law was changed, and silversmiths had to make their wares out of what was known as “Britannia Silver”. Britannia Silver is 95.8% purity – higher than Sterling. This might sound great, except that the more pure silver is, the weaker it gets – so weak that it can’t be used to make anything, since the metal would never hold its shape. It’s because of this that the silversmiths of London protested until the law was abolished, and silversmiths could go back to making sterling silver wares again, with Britannia as an “optional extra”, if they wished.

This law lasted from 1697 – 1720, a period of just 23 years.

Britannia silver, unlike Sterling, was indicated, not by a Lion Passant, but rather, with a Lion’s Head, or alternatively, with the figure of a seated lady – Lady Britannia!

The hallmark which is still (partially) visible is large – nearly 1cm from end to end – which would suggest it was the most important one – the fineness mark.

One way to be absolutely sure about the spoon’s date would be to have it independently assayed again. If it is 95% silver, then that would almost certainly mean that it’s from the late 1600s, or at worst, the first 20 years of the 18th century, which would still make it at least 300 years old!

Concluding Remarks

So, there you have it! An antique, 325-year-old (+/- a few years) Britannia-standard solid silver spoon!

There are loads of websites and books about identifying and studying antique British silver, but the dates and information I used in my research came from the very appropriately-named…

https://www.antiquesilverspoons.co.uk/

Update – 25th September, 2023

As I mentioned in my posting, further up, the only way to definitively prove the spoon’s age was to get it assayed. And the only way to assay the silver to find out its EXACT composition is to expose it to x-rays.

To this end, last week, I took the spoon to a gold-and-silver buyer in town who performs XRF-testing – that’s X-Ray Flourescent testing. Using an x-ray florescent machine, the tester very graciously agreed to test my spoon for me.

“95%”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. 9-5. 95%”.

A spoon of this age, in this condition, made of 95% silver means that it was almost certainly made between 1697 (when Britannia standard was introduced) and 1720 (when it was made “optional”).

Given the styling of the spoon, its construction, the wear and the personalisation, I think we can finally, almost-definitively say that it is from the end of the 17th century.