I recently acquired a small spoon with a collection of other silver items and am unable to find out when it dates from or who it is by. It is marked on the underside of the handle, but only with a lion passant and maker’s initials that seem to be ‘W’ and another letter I cannot quite make out. There is a monogram reading ‘E.T’ on the end of the handle on the underside which, to me, seems to be in quite an early 18th C. script style (although I may be wrong). There is a shell-like design on the reverse of the bowl if this helps dating it…
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Peter
Without an inspired guess (and I’m fresh out of those) it’s going to be near impossible to get the maker of your spoon and in the absence of a maker’s name to pin down the dates I think that the best we can do with a date is mid-18th century. A spoon like yours (Hanoverian pattern) could have been produced any time from 1720 to c1780. Before 1720 it would have been Britannia standard, not sterling. It is likely to be a London spoon simply because that’s where most silver was produced, but it could be a provincial piece. I don’t think that the shell-back design will be much help in dating.