Seal-top Spoon

Date1604-1605

MediumSilver (Sterling)

DimensionsL: 7".

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1971-139

DescriptionJames I seal-top spoon. Hexagon stem with fig-shaped bowl.
Label TextSeal-top spoons enjoyed a long period of popularity with surviving examples dating from as early as the mid-fifteenth century. Made in large numbers in the seventeenth century, they, along with those of slip-top form, were the principal types of spoons used by the earliest colonists. Although no seal-top spoons of American manufacture are known, an English provincial example of about 1700 owned by Governor Brewster of Plymouth Colony is in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. Latten metal or tinned-brass examples have been excavated at Jamestown, Virginia.

This representative London example has the form of seal introduced at the close of the sixteenth century and found on most seventeenth-century examples. Like the various types of cast finials on most London spoons from the early sixteenth century onward, the seal is joined to the handle by a V-shaped joint, the seam barely discernible on the front and back facets of the handle. In contrast, a lapped joint is used, as in 1971-246, on most spoons with finials made in provincial areas. The finials of spoons are usually gilded, as in this instance, even if the remainder of the spoon is left plain. This spoon bears customary London marking with the leopard's head crowned on the face of the bowl below the juncture with the handle and the other marks clustered at the base on the underside of the handle.
InscribedPounced owner's initials (A R) on upper face of finial.
MarkingsMarks date letter "G", lion passant, maker's name, and leopard's head crowned. Maker's "C" enclosing an "M".
ProvenanceNoble W. Hiatt (purchased from Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, 1951)
Vendor: John D. Harris, Haddonfield, New Jersey