Lot 322
322
A HENRY VI SILVER MAIDENHEAD SPOON
THE BENSON COLLECTION (LOTS 301-340)
A HENRY VI SILVER MAIDENHEAD SPOON

MAKER'S MARK A CINQUEFOIL, CIRCA 1450

Details
A HENRY VI SILVER MAIDENHEAD SPOON
MAKER'S MARK A CINQUEFOIL, CIRCA 1450
The fig-shaped bowl with a slightly tapering facetted handle, terminating in a cast maidenhead finial, the bowl later engraved with initials 'M' over 'E*I', marked in bowl
6 in. (15.4 cm.) long
19 dwt. (29 gr.)
Provenance
The Benson Collection by 1952.
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. II, p. 180, pl. I.
D. J. E. Constable, The Benson Collection of Early Silver Spoons, Golden Cross, 2012, pp. 44-46, no. 13.
Exhibited
On loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2006-2012.

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Lot Essay

The mark on this spoon also appears on other spoons of the period, such as a Diamond point from the Cookson collection. The appearance of a rat-tail on the back of the bowl is a rare feature on an English spoon of this date, with the rat-tail more likely to be found on French or Scottish spoons.

The maidenhead finial is a popular form seen both on London and provincial spoons. Timothy Kent, in his introduction to the Benson Collection of Early Silver Spoons, p. 4, cites Sir Charles Jackson's discovery of a reference of 1446 from an inventory of the plate at Durham Priory which lists two spoons 'cum ymaginibus Beatus Mariae in fine eorundum.'

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