Massive spoon

[Jag]

Here's a massive spoon that has me stumped. The only mark I could find is the Sterling mark shown. Why no makers mark? The style looks pretty distinctive; can anyone recognize it? Seems fairly crude - could this be a later reproduction?

[dragonflywink]

It's a poorly done recast of Whiting's 1902 Lily pattern, at that size and shape, perhaps a large berry spoon - on the plus side, most of these were done when silver prices were quite low and are actually sterling...

~Cheryl

[Jag]

Thanks, that makes sense. FWIW, it does seem to be silver. When was this being done? Is there any reason not to scrap this?

[JLDoggett]

I have had similar pieces over the years, mostly made in Asia back in the 50's-60's. I usually do scrap them as they are actually very crude and certainly counterfeits.

[dragonflywink]

They were standard fare at flea markets by the time I was a regularly prowling them in the mid-late '70s, sometimes the working ends from one piece were put onto different handles, making for even worse items. Not surprised that some would come from overseas, but there were also folks casting them here, the son of one dealer I knew ran a dental lab and would recast salt spoons for her - clearly tagged as repros, but of course, they'd hit a secondary market eventually... Can remember recast salt spoons being advertised at wholesale in trade journals, they were popular then and still are - a dealer on a large auction site has been selling her unending stock of recast repros and cast fantasy-design salt spoons as 'estate finds' for years, some sellers are more honest and describe them as new. Several years ago, there seemed to be a spate of recast pieces in uncommon and desirable patterns, forgeries bearing the expected maker's marks rather than a simple "Sterling' - Gorham's Narragansett was particularly popular, possibly because the originals were cast too, quality varied and some were fairly decent fakes.

Personally, sold one recast salt spoon in a pricey pattern many years ago, was clearly described as to what it was, but still feel a pang of guilt that I added to a market already glutted with the dreadful things. Started tossing all of the offending pieces I ran across into a bag and sold them all off for scrap when silver went so high - all tested on an XRF spectrometer as acceptably close to .925 fineness.

~Cheryl