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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The Art of Knokhloma

 

QUESTION: For years I’ve been collecting decorative wooden bowls and utensils that someone told me were Ukranian. They look to be some type folk art but I’m not sure how old the pieces I have actually are.  I’ve never seen or read anything about them, but their bright colors and attractive designs  really attracted me. I found most of the pieces in my collection at garage sales and fleamarkets. What can you tell me about the pieces in my collection?

ANSWER: The pieces in your collection aren’t Ukrainian but Russian—there’s a difference. In fact, they originated in the Kovernino District of the Nizhni Novgorod province north of Moscow. The painting style became to be known as Khokhloma. 

, which first appeared in the second half of the 17th century, is known for its curved and vivid mostly flower, berry and leaf patterns. The Firebird, a figure from the Russian fairytale, can also be used.

A combination of red, black, and gold are typical colors for Khokhloma. When artisans paint on wood, they use mostly red, black, green, yellow and orange  over a gold background. This makes the wooden tableware look heavier and metallic.

The production of painted dishes in Khokhloma is first mentioned in 1659 in the letter of a boyar called Morozov to his bailiff, containing an order for 100 painted dishes and 40 painted wine bowls.

The handicraft owes its origin to the Old Believers, who, fleeing from persecutions of officials, took refuge in the local woods. Even earlier, however, local craftsmen had experience in making tableware from soft woods. But it was icon-painters who taught them the special technique of painting wood in a golden color without the use of real gold.

The craftsmen carved utensils and dishes out of wood, then primed them with clay mortar, raw linseed oil, and tin powder. They then painted a floral pattern on top of this coating. After that, they coated the pieces with linseed oil and hardened them in a kiln at high temperatures. 

Artisans used two principal wood painting techniques on the Khokhloma—the  "superficial technique," red and black colors over a goldish one, and the "background technique," a goldish silhouette-like design over a colored background.

One of the villages where the art of Khokhloma painting had originally been practiced in ancient times grew to become a trading post to which the local craftsmen brought their wares for sale starting from the 18th century.

But it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that Westerners first learned of the Khokhloma painting style through an exhibition in Paris. But by the early 20th century, the style seemed to be fading away, only to be revitalized during the Soviet times. 

The Khokhloma craftsmen united into artels in the 1920s to early 1930s. In the 1960s, the Soviets built a factory called the Khokhloma Painter near the Khokhloma village and another one in the town of Semyonov. These two factories have become the Khokhloma centers of Russia and still produce tableware, utensils,, furniture, and souvenirs.

The three colors—red, black, and gold—used in Khokhloma painting had a profound symbolism for decorating the sacred church vessels and the dishes and cups used in the monasteries and nunneries, as well as in icon ornaments. The red color represented beauty, the gold color symbolized the spiritual heavenly light, while the black color signified the cleansing of the human soul. The religious symbolism of colors has long been lost in the Khokhloma art but the precise and solemn scheme of colors inherent in the festive design of the "gilded" dishes grew to be traditionally used for decorating all wooden Khokhloma articles and made them especially favored by collectors.

There are families in the region famous for Khokhloma art who have been keeping secret formulas of painting materials and techniques, transferring them from one generation to the next for more than three centuries. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Celebrating an Olde Fashioned Holiday" in the 2020 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Beat Those Biscuits

QUESTION: I live in South Carolina, though I’m not a native. Recently, I attended an estate sale at an old farm. Out of all the items for sale, I bought an old clunky table that looks like it may have been used for baking. It stands higher than a regular table and has a hinged top under which is a rectangular stone block. What can you tell me about this table?

ANSWER: It seems that you stumbled upon an old biscuit table. These specially made baking tables were a stable in 19th-century Southern kitchens.

When people think of Southern biscuits, they imagine fluffy, buttery pillows of golden, flaky pastry made from White Lily flour. But these delicacies weren't always common fare on the Southern dinner table. Until baking powder came on the market in the late 19th century, most biscuits were unleavened and beaten.

Housewives and plantation cooks back then pounded the dough, Iayer upon layer, to make the otherwise tough dough flaky and palatable. Recipes in the 1850s required the dough be worked for at least a half hour. The work was so labor intensive that rhythmic pounding resonated from plantation kitchens in the early mornings. One neighborhood in Danville, Kentucky, along its historic Third Street became known as "Beaten Biscuit Row." According to legend, the steady pounding of biscuits from the outdoor kitchens of the houses lining the street greeted passersby during the 19th century.

Preparing biscuits was a tiring job, so cooks, who had to bend over their kitchen tables to knead and pound biscuit dough, needed a special table to save their backs. The result was a worktable of appropriate height at which they could stand and beat the dough into layers for the required 30 minutes. In the beginning, slaves on plantations probably made the first biscuit tables from wood. They were about three feet in diameter and four feet high.

The biscuit table, like the sugar chest, evolved into a furniture form as the 19th century progressed. Increased sugar production and the demand for candies in Creole New Orleans fostered the concept of using marble slabs to prepare confections. This worked so well that the idea crossed over to bread making. By the 1850s, biscuit table makers began incorporating slabs of marble, limestone and granite into the once simple wooden biscuit slab. Going one step further, they added hinged covers to the tabletop to allow dough to rest without fear of insects or other critters ruining a morning's labor. Like the beaten biscuit, itself, the biscuit table seemed to appear in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama, all of which take credit for its origin. Cooks in Louisiana used a related form to make candy confections.

Carpenters used mostly poplar wood to make plantation biscuit tables, though tables of yellow pine and walnut have been known to exist. Most biscuit tables that have survived are sturdy but crude in construction, with many having been fashioned from roughly finished lumber and square nails or pegs. The slabs or stones were generally of locally quarried limestone.

The biscuit table lost its usefulness with the invention of the beaten biscuit machine, a roller contraption cranked by hand much like that found on old wringer washers. This little device could be mounted onto the kitchen worktable or a cook could order one attached to a cast-iron table that could be delivered to a home. Factories in St. Louis commercially produced and shipped biscuit tables to eager housewives throughout the South.

It seems that by the beginning of the 20th century, the beaten biscuit had become Southern folklore, though still preserved in many old-fashioned kitchens of the day. But as the century progressed, southern biscuit tables were either destroyed or stored in barns.

Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels

QUESTION: I was recently cleaning out drawers in my mother’s house after her death and came across a bunch of coins with the slogan “Millions for Defense, But Not One Cent for Tribute” impressed on one side. On the other side is the Liberty Head and the words ONE CENT. At first glance these look like pennies but are larger. What can you tell me about them?

ANSWER: What you have aren’t coins but tokens. Like the famous wooden nickels, merchants used tokens as a way to promote their businesses and some commemorated events. By 1900, tokens had become a common type of coinage by which merchants not only advertised, but created good will and repeat business. The token was in effect a pledge redeemable in goods but not necessarily for currency.

Tokens are coin-like objects used instead of coins and either have a denomination shown or implied by size, color or shape. The use of tokens dates back to Roman times. Back then, the Romans used coin-like objects called spintria to gain entrance to brothels and gaming establishments.

Medieval English monasteries issued tokens to pay for services from outsiders. Residents of nearby villages called these tokens "Abbot's money."

Though token manufacturers usually made them of cheaper metals, such as  copper, pewter, aluminum, brass, and tin, they also used fiber, bakelite, leather, porcelain, and wood.

Sometimes called merchant tokens or “good fors,” American trade tokens originated during the late 18th century, when early circuses produced them for admission to their performances. In the 1820s, manufacturers began commercially producing tokens and this led to a greater demand.

In July, 1836 Congress enacted President Andrew Jackson's "specie circular" law, requiring specie—that is, gold or silver—to be used to pay for government land. This caused people to believe that paper currency, at the time issued by state banks, was unsound. As more and more people began using specie, regular coins disappeared from circulation.

To make it easier for individuals to trade for goods, business men and various organizations began issuing tokens that could be used instead of coins. These tokens became a substitute for one-cent pieces, since they had the same metallic content and size. The token designs could be divided into four categories: those that mentioned the bank and the banking crisis; those that were satirical and sarcastic, the political cartoons of the day; those that were made in imitation of real money; and those issued by enterprising merchants carrying advertising.

The Hard Times tokens of the 1830s and 1840s continued to make merchant tokens popular. During the Civil War, tokens again came into wide use because of the coin shortages caused by it. After the war, merchants once again issued tokens and people continued to use these “good fors” to trade for goods.

Among the many tokens made in imitation of the coins driven from circulation were a number using the phrase, "Millions for Defense, but Not One Cent for Tribute." These tokens bore the familiar Liberty Head and on the reverse the wording was strategically placed to have an enlarged ONE CENT appear as it would on government issued coins. The phrase, "Millions for Defense, but Not One Cent for Tribute," was a rallying cry for America on two occasions in history.

Besides Civil War tokens, there were also wooden tokens, transportation tokens for bridges, toll roads, ferries, and the like, gaming tokens, political tokens, as well as those used by magicians for admission to their acts, churches for permission to receive communion, tokens for telephones, and to pay sales tax. Elongated coins—often pennies pressed flat and made smooth on one side to take etchings of the Lord’s Prayer, Scouts’ oath, and club insignias also were popular.

All kinds of merchants issued tokens for use in their own businesses, including general stores, grocers, department stores, dairies, meat markets, drug stores, saloons, bars, taverns, barbers, coal mines, lumber mills and many other businesses. The era of 1870 through 1920 marked the highest use of "trade tokens" in the country, spurred by the growth of small stores in rural areas.

Railways and public transportation agencies used fare tokens for years, to sell rides in advance at a discount, or to allow patrons to use turnstiles that only to took them. The use of transit tokens in America began in 1831, when John Gibbs issued them for use on his U.S.M. stage in New Jersey. The 1830s saw tokens used on horsecars and horse-drawn omnibuses. By 1897, the U.S. had its first subway in Boston, and in 1904 the New York subway system opened. Ferry, bus, and streetcar companies also produced tokens often out of cheap white metal, aluminum, or more costly bronze. Most of them featured cutouts in the shapes of letters to differentiate them from other coins.

Some churches used to give tokens to members passing a religious test prior to the day of communion, then required the token for entry. Most of these were pewter, often cast by the minister using the church’s own molds.

But probably the most well-known token is the wooden nickel. Merchants and banks gave them to their customers to redeem for a specific item, usually a drink. On December 5, 1931, during the Great Depression, the Citizen’s Bank of Tenino, Washington, failed and issued emergency currency printed on thin shingles of wood. Local merchants couldn’t get change without traveling 30 miles over mountainous roads which took four hours one way.  So the bank, at the insistence of the Chamber of Commerce, decided to issue it’s own money, some of which was in five-cent denominations.

The Chicago World's Fair in 1933 issued wooden nickels as souvenirs, and the tradition of wooden nickels as tokens and souvenirs was born. The phrase, "Don't take any wooden nickels," reminds people to be cautious in their business dealings since some unscrupulous characters tried to use them in their dealings with people.