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Lot Essay
Seal-Top Spoons
The earliest seal-top spoon with a precise date is the Pudsey spoon, marked for London, 1525. The form was in use for many years prior as noted by Commander and Mrs How who list examples that stylistically date to as early as circa 1450 (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. 152, pl. 2). Two examples of circa 1500 were formerly in the Benson Collection (The Benson Collection; Christie's, London, 4 June 2013, lots 334 and 335, £9,375 and £11,875 respectively). The term seal-top is perhaps something of a misnomer as it suggests that the finial is intended to be used with wax to seal an envelope. To do so the engraving would need to be be reversed and How notes that no seal-top spoon has yet appeared which is so engraved.
Christopher Easton, Silversmith
Christopher Easton is another silversmith described by Timothy Kent (T. Kent, West Country Silver Spoons and Their Makers 1550-1750, Windsor, 1992, p. 85). Like John Edes, the Exeter silversmith who produced the maidenhead spoon offered here as lot 446, Easton was apprenticed to John Jones, gaining his freedom in September 1583. Though spoons make up a great deal of his existing works he is also known to have also produced church plate.
The earliest seal-top spoon with a precise date is the Pudsey spoon, marked for London, 1525. The form was in use for many years prior as noted by Commander and Mrs How who list examples that stylistically date to as early as circa 1450 (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. 152, pl. 2). Two examples of circa 1500 were formerly in the Benson Collection (The Benson Collection; Christie's, London, 4 June 2013, lots 334 and 335, £9,375 and £11,875 respectively). The term seal-top is perhaps something of a misnomer as it suggests that the finial is intended to be used with wax to seal an envelope. To do so the engraving would need to be be reversed and How notes that no seal-top spoon has yet appeared which is so engraved.
Christopher Easton, Silversmith
Christopher Easton is another silversmith described by Timothy Kent (T. Kent, West Country Silver Spoons and Their Makers 1550-1750, Windsor, 1992, p. 85). Like John Edes, the Exeter silversmith who produced the maidenhead spoon offered here as lot 446, Easton was apprenticed to John Jones, gaining his freedom in September 1583. Though spoons make up a great deal of his existing works he is also known to have also produced church plate.