LONDON, 1494, MAKER'S MARK VV CONJOINED

Details

A HENRY VII SILVER HEXAGONAL-KNOP SPOON
LONDON, 1494, MAKER'S MARK VV CONJOINED
The fig-shaped bowl with facetted tapering handle, terminating in hexagonal finial, marked with leopard's head in bowl and with maker's mark and date letter on back of handle
6 3/8 in. (16.2 cm.) long
1 oz. 10 dwt. (47 gr.)

Provenance

Captain Richard William Gillespie, The Beeches, Andover.
A Gentleman [Capt. R. W. Gillespie]; Christie's, London, 6 April 1911, lot 121 (£430 to Crichton).
with Crichton Brothers from 1911.
Henry Newton Veitch (d.1925), 20 Coleherne Court, London.
The Benson Collection by 1952.

Literature

H. N. Veitch, Catalogue, 31 May 1922, catalogue number 11.
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. I, p. 92, pl. 8.
D. J. E. Constable, The Benson Collection of Early Silver Spoons, Golden Cross, 2012, pp. 85-86, no. 28.

Exhibited

Toronto, The Royal Ontario Museum, Seven Centuries of English Domestic Silver, January to March 1958, no. A.12 (lent by Miss J. P. Benson).
On loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2006-2012.

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Matilda Burn

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Lot Essay

The hexagonal form of the finial on this massive and heavy spoon has been thought to relate to type of finial found in wills and inventories including gold spoons recorded in the inventory of plate of King Henry VIII published by Sir Charles Jackson, An Illustrated History of English Plate: Ecclesiastical and Secular, London, 1967, vol. 2, p. 496. 'a Spone of gold with a knopp six squared therein the kinges armes graven gyven by the lorde Dawbeney.... However Constable, op. cit., suggests the term 'knopp six square is more likely to have been used to describe what we now call seal-top spoons.

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