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Wm. Rogers patterns are usually fairly easy, if tedious, to identify, but I'm stumped on this one. It's a grapefruit spoon, length 150 mm (5-15/16"):









Anyone recognize it?

Well, wouldn't you know? Now I've found it, while looking for another Wm. Rogers pattern. Apparently, the grapefruit spoons were the only pieces in the pattern. It was not a full line, and this source, at least, doesn't have a name for the pattern (RL code INSGRAPEF). Their date for them is 1960.

I found the same pattern on Etsy, the lady said it was called Grapefruit-believe it or not, was made in 1960

Oh good grief. Whoda thunk it'd be called *that*?!

Thanks for finding it.

Have seen your pattern a few times before, and it's shown in Hagan's 4th edition Silverplated Flatware (1990) as 'Grapefruit', 1960 - doubt that was actually the pattern name, and the other name it's sometimes found under, 'Stars', most likely traces back to the description at the matching service site you referenced (design doesn't look like stars to me). My guess would be that Rogers introduced your spoon, with a similar modern look to the promotional mail-order Florida Citrus Mutual grapefruit spoon, as a retailer's alternative to the premium, meant for sales through department stores, etc. - the 1959 ad below, with your spoon, was from Gimbels.

1959:




In late 1956, the Florida Citrus Mutual, in an effort to promote grapefruit sales, obtained distribution rights to a serrated 'citrus fruit spoon' (U.S. Patent 2778109), and with a sleek modern handle designed, an initial order of 10,000 pieces was placed with William Rogers. Starting in early 1957, they offered them at an inexpensive '4 for $1.00', placing order coupons for the spoon sets in every bag of grapefruit, also launching a large advertising campaign, and giving them as promotional gifts - ads show that many orders went to Wallingford, CT, suggesting some fulfillment was connected directly to International Silver, rather than going through the small in-house staff who handled distribution at the Mutual's Lakeland, FL headquarters - by 1960, over 1.25 million sets (5 million spoons) had been sold. In 1960, they were also offered as a premium for buying two boxes of Sterling Salt, the distribution again apparently handled by International/Rogers. Serrated grapefruit spoons became extremely common, manufactured by numerous companies, with all sorts of handles, but the same set of four spoons, for 'Florida grapefruit', was advertised until at least the mid '70s - from the mid '60s to '73, a choice of silverplate or stainless was offered, but in '74, only stainless was available (the grapefruit growers still run spoon promotions occasionally, but they're Asian-made stainless, in a very plain design). The only silver reference that I have showing the pattern is the 2nd edition Silver Plated Flatware Patterns, by Davis & Deibel (1981), noting it as a 1958 'no name' pattern and showing a 1959 ad for the spoons. That spoon is listed on the same matching service site as yours, designated as 'Grapefruit (Lines)', I've never found reference to a pattern name and wonder what source provided them with 'Lines' for that pattern (though there are lines in the design) - possible that 'Lines' and 'Stars' were just how the matching service differentiated the two similar grapefruit spoons in their inventory...

~Cheryl



March, 1957:


April. 1957:


1959:

You are amazing, Cheryl. This must be the most thorough answer I've ever gotten to any question I've asked online, about anything!

And I agree that the designs don't look like "stars." The service I mentioned does add descriptive words to their pattern listings, such as, "scrolls," "floral," "ridged," etc., so I, too, suspect they're the source of "stars." By the way, these descriptors sometime help when using a general search engine. For example, if you do a web image search on

site:nameofsite.com Oneida floral

you'll get hits on Oneida patterns with floral motifs – among other things, of course. It's not a very efficient search because the service doesn't add descriptors to most of their listings, but occasionally it saves me some time. And I'll do that, first, before I go through the images page-by-page.

Gee, my little grapefruit spoon seems more "special" now. Only now I'm not satisfied to have just one!

Thank you, so much.

DianaGale,
I know I'm coming to the table a year and a half late, but I just wanted to tell the story from the consumer side that these Rogers grapefruit spoons matched nothing else, and were indeed sold promotionally.

I was a school age kid in the late 50s, and we had a set of 4 that looked identical to those in the picture with the salt box that co-admin Cheryl (DragonflyWink) posted to you. Ours were in that "lines" style. My memory was it was a promotion via cereal boxes. All these years I'd misremembered, thinking we'd pulled these directly out of cereal boxes (you used to get amazing things in cereal boxes in the 50s!) but these postings reminded me that my mother had actually sent away for them, The ad for 4 spoons for a dollar jolted my memory, and that picture was what we clipped from the back of the box, not an ad for anything inside!)

We lived in California, my mother grew up on a lemon orchard, so I know for certain she would never have bought any Florida grapefruit! She was pretty snobby about her California citrus. My memory being already suspect, I suppose they might have been from an ad on a salt box. However, it seems unlikely, as I never heard of that brand, and mom used only Mortons. She was the loyal type that didn't switch brands. So I really wonder if they were also promoted via cereal boxes, too?

My mother always carried one of those spoons in her purse, all the way into the 90's, and her dementia. She hated being served grapefruit in a restaurant without one. And it didn't break her regular set to keep it in her purse. I also at one time had two of them, always the ones that matched nothing. One should be floating around here somewhere but an adult child may have it by now.

Hehe, welcome to the forums, your post gave me a chuckle. My brother and his family were down last month and picked up some gorgeous navel oranges at a farmer's market, leaving a few with my 88 year old Mom, who just lost her precious old navel tree to disease - when I saw them, had to ask why they bought California oranges, and Mom just laughed, saying, "they may be pretty with that thick, shiny rind, but they can't match our sweet, juicy oranges". Snobbery exists down here in this 'Citrus State', too!

Haven't run across any grapefruit spoon premium ads connected to cereal, but not all premiums were advertised other than on the packaging. To my mind, salt would be a more appropriate pairing, salting grapefruit was the only way Mom could get me to eat the darn things (still don't care for them). That pattern, always described as 'Florida' grapefruit spoons (even in the salt ad), was heavily advertised across the country, in addition to the order forms included with bags of grapefruit - perhaps your mother swallowed her state pride and ordered them from one of those ads, anyway (many were mailed to Wallingford, CT rather than Lakeland, FL).

By the late '50s, sets in various designs could be found at retail stores, and manufacturers were starting to produce them in their regular line patterns. The ones we used when I was a kid in the '60s were a typical swirly stainless pattern, and they were an improvement on the curved grapefruit knife (frankly, my spoons are usually used for melon) - we got rid of most everything when we moved down here in '71 and those didn't make the cut, but it didn't really matter, since you could buy all sorts of them at almost any kind of store here. Though, sadly, almost all of the Orlando-area citrus groves of my youth are long gone, our local grove store still carries grapefruit spoon gift sets, but they're not near as nice as the originals...

~Cheryl

What a fun thread this has turned out to be... Just a comment from your resident (retired) biologist.

There are basically two kinds of commercially grown oranges: eating oranges and juice oranges. The former are mostly the thick-skinned Navels, grown mainly in California; the latter are mostly the thin-skinned Valencias, grown mainly in Florida. I was born and raised in California, but am now retired in Florida, so I have a foot in each camp. I love citrus and do not discriminate based on where they were grown, as long as it is in the U.S.

My all time favorite? Florida's Indian River Ruby Red grapefruit!

(And as my flatware pattern doesn't have grapefruit spoons, I'm keeping the Oneida spoon for myself.)

Diane ~ my Mom shares your enthusiasm for the Ruby Reds. She is so saddened by the loss of her 50+ year old Navel to the greening disease, it declined over a couple of years, but up until then, even after a hard lightning hit 30 years ago, had produced prodigious amounts of large juicy fruit, fabulous for both eating and juicing. Can remember a friend's father, owner of one of the larger local groves, telling me that our warm nights here produced the thinner skins and less acid fruit than those grown in California with their cooler nights (sounds so nice, instead of our often steamy summer nights!). Tangerine girl myself, but do enjoy most other citrus, and just realized that I have to get to the grove store for some of the wonderful Honeybells before they're all gone, promised another brother that I'd send some to him up in frigid Wisconsin...

~Cheryl

Love the discussion about California vs. Florida citrus. It's interesting how the climates from each state can produce significant differences in the same varieties of fruit. We recently wrote up a blog post about just this subject.

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