West Country Seal-top Spoon
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Spoon - Seal Top - Sherborne area c.1640 - 176mm, 56grams - Ref. No.: KJ/9644</p>
A superb provincial Seal Top spoon with a distinctive and impressive cast baluster seal finial. This form of finial was made by the Arden workshop and similar spoons are shown in "West Country Silver Spoons & Their Marks 1550 - 1750" as figs 3 & 4. Many local spoonmakers to Sherborne bought in these cast finials and applied them to their own spoons.
This spoon is marked with a single mark to the bowl and is likely to have been made either in or in the vicinity of Sherborne: likely candidates would be the market towns of North Dorset, Wiltshire or East Somerset, for example Wincanton, Crewkerne, Salisbury, Devizes etc
There is an interesting engraved "ID" to the flat seal end and the spoon is in overall fine condition. It has a beautiful fig shaped bowl in original unworn condition. The stem is engraved "1595", however this was probably added in the 19th century as an erroneous date. An excellent 17th century spoon with a large bowl and well worthy of further research.
