CIRCA 1150-1350

Details

A MEDIEVAL SILVER-GILT SPOON
CIRCA 1150-1350
The slightly ovoid bowl with twisted tubular handle
3¾ in. (9.6 cm.) long
11 dwt. (17 gr.)

Provenance

By tradition excavated at Warwick.
Colonel Robert Frederick Ratcliff (c.1867-1943), M.P. for Staffordshire
Colonel R. F. Ratcliff, C.M.G., deceased, late of Newton Park, Burton-on-Trent; Christie's, London, 10 June 1943, lot 186, part (£9 to How).
The Benson Collection.

Literature

Commander G. E. P. How and J. P. How, English and Scottish Silver Spoons, Mediaeval to Late Stuart and Pre-Elizabethan Hallmarks on English Plate, London, 1952, vol. 1, p. 56, pl. 11.
D. J. E. Constable, The Benson Collection of Early Silver Spoons, Golden Cross, 2012, pp. 25-26, no. 4.

Exhibited

On loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2006-2012.

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Lot Essay

The original use of this spoon has been the subject of much discussion. Constable, op. cit., p. 25 records that C. Oman suggested in English Domestic Silver, London, 1968 that this spoon might have been for use in church as an incense spoon to transfer incense from the boat to the censer. He cites an inventory of 1368 from the Archdeaconry of Norwich which records an incense spoon at West Walton Church. Another possibility is that it was a chalice spoon, however How considered the former use more probable.

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