A Spoonful of Love

 

QUESTION: There are many ways of saying “I love you,” but one of the most unusual is the love spoon. I recently saw several of these in antique shops while traveling through Wales. About all the dealers could tell me about them was that they were gifts of love from a suitor to his true love, a tradition that has existed in Wales for several centuries. I bought one to take home, even though it seemed to be overly priced. What can you tell me about Welsh love spoons?  

ANSWER: Rural lovers with their hearts set on a plain milkmaid would probably have been unable to buy a loving gift for Valentine’s Day back in the in the late 18th and 19th centuries. So they fashioned tokens of their love from whatever was close at hand, using whatever skills they had. Often these gifts might have been small personal items, such as knitting sheathes, stay busks and lace bobbins. But the gift that seemed to have stirred young girls’ hearts the most was the Welsh love spoon.

No one knows why the Welsh made these love spoons. However, there was an earlier tradition among Scandinavians of giving love spoons. However, today most people associate the love spoon with the Welsh.

So why give a spoon? For centuries the humble spoon was one of the most familiar of  household utensils. The practice of storing spoons fitting snugly together prompted people to give a romantic meaning to the word in the 18th century. The delightfully descriptive word “spoonways” eventually embraced the human desire to emulate the closeness of these spoons in bed. The Victorians went further and used the verb “to spoon” to describe courting. In fact, the phrase continued in use well into the 20th century with popular song writers who found it a useful for its ability to rhyme with words such words as moon, June, swoon, and honeymoon.

It’s difficult to be precise about the origins of love spoons. However, enough of them inscribed with a date survive to enable collectors to trace their styles. One of the earliest recorded dates to 1667.

Most of the spoons on the market today date from the late 18th and 19th centuries. Although generations of spoon carvers would have copied styles and designs, dating them is difficult. Those spoons with a broad, flat  pierced handle seem to come predominantly from North Wales, while those that display clumsy carving and a lack of proportion tend to come from Pembrokeshire. The lucky young girl who received one really didn’t care where it came from. 

What’s certain is that such prized possessions would have been displayed in a place of honor and no doubt the most eligible girls could acquire a small collection of these spoons before choosing their mates. The. infinite variety of styles and designs found in Welsh love spoons means that there are no two alike. Their great charm rests in what  they represent and the symbolism in the motifs that carvers used to create them.

The most common of these motifs was naturally the heart. Two hearts intertwined contained even more obvious meaning. Closely associated with the heart, and almost as common, was a motif that looked like a fat comma. This symbol comes from the ancient Egyptians sign for the soul. Thus, hearts and commas declare heart and soul. Keyholes represent another powerful motif, offering a way into the suitor's heart. And even other spoons feature a small muse, and occasionally a key that really helped make the suitor’s feelings known. 

Still, the formalities had to be observed and many love spoons incorporate chains—not simply to demonstrate the skill of the carver—but to indicate the chains that bind a marriage. Shoes and boots also appear frequently on love spoons. The origin of this motif is a reference in the Bible in which the exchange of a shoe signified agreement of a marriage contract.

Carvers often incorporated initials with or without dates, and sometimes created spoons with a deeper, oblong window cutout into which a suitor inserted a piece of paper inscribed with names, dates, or drawings. Likewise, carvers sometimes added shards of broken mirrors. Why they did this is unclear. Perhaps it was to add a note of brightness to their spoon design, for none of these shards was large enough to serve as a looking glass. 

And while they used the most accessible and workable materials to carve their spoons, carvers used a variety of woods, especially easily carved sycamore and fruitwood. 

Occasionally, they created spoons from more exotic woods and materials, such as mahogany, ivory, or whalebone. This suggests that a sailor could have carved the spoon while on a voyage to a distant land. Sailors also seemed more likely to have embellished their spoons with inlaid colored wax or tiny brass pins. Some went even further and incorporated a lantern or cage containing free-moving balls into the handles, showing off the skill of the carver. 

The skill of some of these spoon makers was extraordinary, with the manual dexterity to produce even the most basic spoons. It’s also possible that an especially talented spoon carver could have made spoons for others in his area, accounting for the similarity of designs in spoons from certain places.

Because love spoons now fetch higher prices both in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, it would be easy to give them an importance beyond their humble origins. Essentially, love spoons were simply a declaration of love, pure and simple.  

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From Boredom to Art

QUESTION: I belong to a reenactor group that specializes in Revolutionary War reenactments. Some of the men carry powder horns as part of their equipment. Most of these are plain reproductions. They serve the purpose. At several larger gatherings of reenactment groups, I’ve seen some beautifully engraved horns. What can you tell me about these engraved horns?  Might they be original or are they reproductions?

ANSWER: Powder horn collectors are a very specialized group. The horns they collect are usually engraved but not all of them are valuable. Today, there are a number of very good reproductions and contemporary powder horns being made. They’re so well done that it’s often impossible to tell the authentic ones from the reproductions.

Powder horns once provided a practical, inexpensive way to carry gun powder for use in the early flintlock and percussion firearms. They were America's first art form. Early settlers had to work so hard there was no time to make art.



The French and Indian War was the catalyst for horn art. Soldiers had a lot of time on their hands and were lonesome. So on their horns they drew images of their houses, trees, their gardens, their dogs, their girlfriends and other things that reminded them of home. But the simple powder horn of the early frontier evolved into personal works of art out of necessity. Soldiers, and perhaps groups of hunters, had to have an obvious way of identifying their horns.

Sometimes they used only their initials. If the horn owner was literate, or knew someone who could copy letters, dates, names and places, he had them engraved onto his horn. Eventually, animals, mythical creatures like mermaids or griffons, birds, snakes, various styles of flowers and vines and all sorts of geometrics decorated powder horns. To make their horns more personal, some men engraved rhymes on their horns. Next to his wife and children, a man’s powder horn was often his most cherished possession.

This high level of artistic competence among common soldiers and pioneers shows that many people in the Colonies must have had art training. Children who went to school learned penmanship and calligraphy which helped in engraving their horns as young adults.



Less artistic soldiers could pay professional hornsmiths, who traveled with the troops, set up tents, and took orders, to customize their horns. Better-paid military officers could afford to set the trend around camp for horns with similar designs. Historians believe there was a community of horn carvers who observed and borrowed from each other's work.

The earliest known American engraved horn, inscribed with the name Daniel Tuttle, dates from 1727. But older doesn't translate into more valuable. Seventeenth-century "pilgrim horns" sell moderately because they were plain and lacked artwork. Most of the classic engraved horns are 13 to 17 inches long. But horns may vary from a few inches to over two feet long. Usually, the bigger the horn is, the older it is, because men took longer forays into the forest to hunt in the 18th century.

Early on, settlers hunted for weeks at a time. As they got more settled, they would go hunting in the afternoon, so they didn't need to carry two or three pounds of powder with them. Because of this, they took smaller horns which they would carry in their bags or pockets.

Early settlers often carried two horns. One was a smaller horn which held fine-grain, faster burning gunpowder used only for priming the pan in early flintlock mechanisms. When percussion replaced flintlocks beginning in the 1830s, most men carried only a single horn in the field.



But many hunters and soldiers ceased using powder horns altogether in the 1830s with the advent of brass flasks and leather pouches.

So how can a collector tell an old horn from a new one. Old engravings often start deep when the knife first enters but then pressure is decreased and the rest of the line has uniform depth. Lines made with a knife and not a dentist's drill won’t end abruptly but will extend beyond the image's outline.

Collectors look for the "warmth and glow" emanating from an antique powder horn. The most prized horns are those with maps engraved on them. Often they show forts or towns along a river. Some originated as guidelines allowing soldiers to find their way back to forts. They became popular Ind eventually were professionally made by hornsmiths. Some map horns, though are believed to have been carved long after the war when soldiers returned tome. In some cases, horns were used as proof of military service, thus qualifying their owners to a pension.

While ordinary 18th- and 19th-century horns are common and usually sell for $10 to $40, those engraved with intricate artwork have attained the level of treasured American folk art worth thousands of dollars. Engraved horns can sell for as little as $34 and as much as $34,000. Many engraved horns came from the area around Lake George, New York, site of Fort Ticonderoga. Horns inscribed with historic names from that region are more valuable.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about Colonial America in the Spring 2018 Edition, "Early Americana," online now.

Blowin' in the Wind

QUESTION: We just purchased an old farm house and barn. The barn has an old weather vane mounted on top of a cupola on the roof. My husband and I aren’t sure if we should restore it or leave it as is. What can you tell me about weather vanes in general and whether we should have it restored?

ANSWER: It doesn’t really matter how old your weather vane is, as long as it’s not new. Old weather vanes atop old barns are an American tradition and today are worth some bucks, even if they’re weathered.

Weather vanes have been blowing into the wind for as long as farmers and sailors needed to know the direction of the breeze, but they have traditionally performed another function as well. Silhouetted against the sky for all to see, a weather vane was often an emblem that declared to the world the profession of the person who mounted it: a quill for a lawyer, a dory for a fisherman, a prize Holstein for a dairy farmer.

The earliest known weather vane, dating to 48 B.C., was an image of Triton—a Greek god with the head and torso of a man and the tail of a fish—mounted on The Tower of the Winds in Athens.

Weather vanes didn’t gain popularity until nobles in medieval England flew banners from their castle walls emblazoned with their coats of arms. After the Normans conquered England, these "fanes,” as the banners came to be known, were made of iron with designs cut into them. Since what wouldn't bend might break, makers soon rigged them to turn with the breeze. By the English Renaissance, the fane had become a vane, a simpler and more functional device affixed atop a merchant's shop as often as on a knight's battlement.

The colonists who settled America brought their traditions with them, including the weather vane. While it's likely that the first colonial vanes were crudely cut from wood, by the late 1600s several Puritan meeting houses were topped by iron vanes. Boston's Old State House, erected in 1713, sported a swallow-tailed banner with an arrow, and by 1740, America's first craftsman of weather vanes, Shem Drowne, had begun fashioning copper vanes for Boston's public buildings.

Prior to the 1850s, blacksmiths created most vanes. And though they devoted considerable skill and imagination to them, forging iron vanes or beating them out of copper was largely a sideline, something a blacksmith did on request.

Blacksmiths in coastal New England towns, where watching the wind has always been vital, made vanes in the shape of ships for sea captains, cod and flounder vanes for fishermen, and leviathans for the whale hunters on Nantucket and at New Bedford. In-land, farmers sawed crude wooden vanes in the shapes of plows and farm animals, or found a blacksmith who could fashion more sophisticated vanes for their barns.

After the 1850s, metalworkers like Alvin Jewell, of Waltham, Massachusetts, began manufacturing copper vanes using templates and molds, a process that was faster than the ancient repousse method, in which they pounded copper into the desired shape. Speedier manufacturing processes meant lower costs, and Jewell found that his patterns sold quite well through mail-order catalogs.

L.W. Cushing, perhaps the best-known weather vane manufacturer of the 19th century. He added them to a collection of over 100 silhouette and full-bodied vanes in his catalog. Other weather vane companies soon opened for business, including J.W. Fiske and E.G. Washburneboth of New York City, and Harris &Co. of Boston.

It was during the height of the Victorian Era when weather vanes were one of the most sought after items. They began appearing on everything from stables to gazebos. Prices ranged from $15 to $400 for the  vane, its brass turning rod, a copper ball, and a set of brass cardinals indicating the points of the compass.

The boom in weather vanes didn't last long, only 50 years or so, but during that period hundreds of designs were sold throughout America: banners, locomotives, fire engines, Statues of Liberty, clipper ships, river steamers, cannons, even sea monsters and dragons. Still, the traditional designs—roosters, horses, and other animals—remained the most popular.

By the early 20th century, changing tastes and simpler home design—particularly the decline of the cupola—caused a decline in vane popularity.
               
People began to be collect weather vanes as folk art about 40 years ago. Many sought vanes made by factories that originally sold them through catelogues, so handmade vanes weren’t even an issue. The highest amount ever paid for a weather vane was for a factory-made, copper Indian chief vane from 1900 that sold for $5.8 million at Sotheby’s in October 2006. Others have sold for prices from four figures on up.

Scarce and unusual weathervane forms, such as mermaids, cars, trains, and firemen, are very popular with collectors. The most common ones, however, are horses, roosters, and cows which tend to fetch lower prices.

The majority of collectors like old copper vanes that have a green or verdigris patina which helps to date it.  But the biggest problem are the vanes made now from original molds from defunct factories.
Though manufacturers generally don’t conceal the replicas’ origins, subsequent sellers often do.

The weathervanes that command the highest prices have not been restored. They have a patina—often noticeably different on one side thanks in part to prevailing winds and decades of exposure to sun, sleet, rain, snow and birds.