Mote spoon?

British Silver What is it?
1

Did find a odd looking spoon, the style/type is named MOTE spoon. What is it used for? A straining type?
Never seen anything like it before.

Thanks

2

Mote Spoons were practical necessities in the early years of tea drinking. Tea leaves had to be steeped within each teacup. When the tea was ready, the spoon was used to fish out the soaked bits of leaves.
These spoons, with their pierced bowls, were also used to separate the larger tea leaves stored within a tea chest, from any alien bits that managed to find their way into the bags of raw tea leaves during the harvesting process.
Another aspect of the mote spoon’s design was its narrow and usually pointed handle, which allowed it to be pushed down the spout of the teapot to unclog any tea leaves that may have clogged it up.
Regards
John

3

Thanks for the information. Great help for me.
So, from what I understand, a Mote spoon is not found in every antique shop?
Guess they went out of use when the tea strainer come. So, that will make them all old and maybe rare?

Thanks

4


I have a very strong theory about the mote spoon and its useage. My idea shatters the considered opinion that they were used in relation to tea.
My theory is as follows:
I think the mote spoon originated out of a drink that was and still is, a Chillean bevarage known as “Mote con Huesillo”. After voyages to the New World and South America I think this fascinating drink would have brought back and taken up by the gentry of the day. All the ingredients were available in the UK at that time and would explain why it could possibly have been a “fad” for less than a century.
The drink itself consists of cooked husked wheat, dried peaches, sugar, water and cinnamon - where the peaches and wheat were soaked overnight, then once hydrated cooked with sugar and water and maybe a cinnamon stick. Once put in a glass the sweet liquid (anything sweet was popular in this era!) the wheat or motes sank to the bottom. Hence the need for a long pierced bowled spoon to eat the motes and a toothpick (the spiked end of the mote spoon) to remove the wheat husks from the teeth. I argue this point that if the mote spoon was meant for tea then there would be far more of them in extant than there are, they would be found made in other materials (for the less well-healed) like plate, copper, brass or pewter - and they would have come en-suite inside tea caddies.