www.925-1000.com

This is a mote spoon

Sometimes I saw some spoon that have the bowl just like a mote spoon, but the handle is like a regular teaspoon.
How do you call these spoons and what is their purpose?
Amena

Tea in the 17th and 18th century was supplied in a rather crude form with large leaves and a great deal of dust. The initial use of mote spoon was lifting the tea leaves from the caddy and gently shaking or tapping the spoon so the dust or mote dropped prior to use in the pot. The sharp pointed end would have been used to dislodge blockages from the inside of the spout of the tea pot. All said, they were not used for skimming ‘motes’ from the top of the tea in a cup.

But beware of fakes! It takes less than an hour to pierce (perforate) an ordinary spoon bowl and reshape it, transforming scrap silver into more lucrative ``mote`` spoon. Still, faking the spike is easily disclosed because the shaft, being flat, can only be tapered to create the spike, unless it’s made as a separate part and soldered to the bowl. It would pay off only if you have e.g. an early XVIII scrap spoon. Genuine mote spoons should be longer than teaspoons with the spike well formed four sided spear.

This is seldom seen today (many ``mote`` spoons offered elsewhere have either the shaft gradually tapered to the sharp point or no pointed end at all).


Vienna 1840 spoon - pierced bowl; being 9 inches long and the bowl of 3.5 inches must have been used for serving bonbons, nuts or whatever.
But the question is whether sharp pointed end is mandatory to define mote spoon.

I think AG2012 is perhaps being a little too categoric about the use of mote spoons. I am not aware of any hard evidence for how they were used though Ian Pickford, in his book “Silver Flatware” did put forward the case for the use AG2012 describes. There are others who are less convinced and, unless I have missed some recent evidence, I think one needs to be more tentative in describing their use. What we know for certain is that they were part of the tea equipage and in their day were referred to as tea strainer spoons.

A four-sided spear-head is certainly not a requirement for a genuine mote spoon. Plenty of English mote spoons, particularly the early ones, have a stem that ends in a simple point, and the detail of the spear-head, when present, can vary.

Mote spoon is a relatively modern term for these articles and it is probably reasonable to restrict its use to spoons with a pierced teaspoon size bowl and a long pointed stem made between the late 17th and the late 18th century to avoid misunderstanding. However, there are rare examples of teaspoons with pierced bowls in18th century sets. They probably had the same use as mote spoons. I think these pierced teaspoons are mainly found in picture front patterns to match the rest of the set. Of course, if such a pierced teaspoon turns up separated from its set it becomes a matter of judgement whether the piercing is indeed original or is a later “enhancement”. Where I agree with 2012 is on the amount of faked mote spoons around to trap the unwary.

Is there a mote spoon index that catalogues the known examples of mote spoons? I've been searching for the maker's mark on this small mote spoon and I can't seem to find the answer, but other details of the spoon including the piercing pattern could potentially solve the mystery.

Also, if Grimwade's was arranged chronologically then I could jump directly into the time period of the mote spoon and search around for the correct maker's mark rather than going through them alphabetically. Of course, with the lost smallworker's register, this complicates things.

If someone were to find that missing registry it would be truly amazing.

I'm not aware of any catalogue, and dating by the style of piercing can only indicate a pretty broad likely time frame. Attributing the piercing to a particular maker seems to me only to be a possibility if the style is exceptionally distinctive.

The full size revised Jackson organises marks chronologically but, given the number of mid 18th century makers, searching that way to try and match a worn and incomplete mark can be just as frustrating.