Spoon

Irish Georgian silver made outside Dublin and Cork comes with significant rarity value

The sale of Silver and Objects of Vertu at Bonhams Knightsbridge on October 20-21 was topped by a multi-estimate bid for a remarkable flatware service by Tiffany.

For many years the largest city outside London, Norwich had its own silver assay office during three periods from 1565-1702.

Silver was the major strength of a recent two-day sale at Dreweatts (25% buyers’ premium). All bar one of the 549 lots got away to a hammer total tipping the £1m mark.

The collecting history of English silver spoons spans well over a century.

A Plymouth solicitor’s lifetime appreciation of West Country silver was shared by enthusiastic bidders at Chilcotts’ (21% buyer’s premium) Honiton rooms.

Eight frost fairs were held on the Thames between 1607-1814, taking advantage of the firm ice that formed on the river as it flowed slowly in the shallows near the old London Bridge.

Further lots from ancient country seat star alongside a stellar specialist collection.

As very personal items, typically weighing little more than an ounce of bullion, the most numerous silver survivors from the 17th century are spoons.

The principal private collection of silver sold at Woolley & Wallis's latest specialist auction included a fine array of caddy spoons.

Gavin Campbell (1851-1922), the 7th Earl of Breadalbane, was a prominent society figure and Liberal politician in the Gladstone administration but is best known in collecting circles as the owner of a vast array of silver.

Michael Harris signature piece sells well at auction alongside Louis Osman silver spoons set

As hugely personal items and of relatively small melt value, spoons represent the great majority of English domestic silver items surviving from the pre-civil war period.

Once the second city in the kingdom, Norwich had its own silver assay office during three periods between 1565 and 1702.

MADAM – Just to add to the provenance of the newly discovered Scottish disc-end spoon in your most recent edition (Pick of the week, ATG No 2456, sold at Lyon & Turnbull for £21,000).

While most early Scottish spoon types follow closely known and comparable patterns from England or mainland Europe, the ‘disc-end’ is an exception. Made for perhaps a century from c.1580, it is a form seemingly unique to Scotland.

Alongside pieces made in Kinsale, Galway and Waterford, silver from the small County Cork town of Youghal is among the scarcest of all Irish provincial silver. Only a handful of pieces survive that carry the punning town mark of a yawl.

Satirical magazine Private Eye once ran a series highlighting the fatuity of interviews by supposedly asking famous names their feelings towards spoons, there being nothing more mundane or less worthy of comment. But the appeal of an antique spoon to the cognoscenti is not difficult to appreciate.

On account of its relative scarcity, all Irish silver carries a premium. It is the pieces made in small provincial centres that are most highly prized.

Rare as Forres silver is, three pieces by the Highland town’s smiths John and Patrick Riach were on offer at Edinburgh auction house Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) on October 11 – the fiddle pattern dessert spoon, below, and two characteristic Scottish toddy labels.