Goodday, friends.
I’m excited as anything about this latest item, as it is my first trefid and also my oldest spoon so far. That’s if I am correct in identifying it up til now. Please see four pics.
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From the left there’s the mark of James Tookey, then the lion passant (upside down), then the crowned leopard, and finally the date letter A in Old English script. That seems to be 1756.
What’s a bit confusing to me is that I have not been able to find an image of a trefid spoon similar to mine. I do understand that such an old spoon being handmade could turn out to be unique/one of a kind.
In about 1660 trefids were introduced to Britain. British people took a liking to this style and some handed over their existing British flatware to be melted and worked into these “more fashionable French spoons”. Or so the story goes. I suppose Tookey was one such silversmith who cashed in on this fad.
Friends, how am I doing? What do you think of this trefid? Should I even TRY to interpret that face on the flat of the stem? Is this artwork amateur or expert, taking everything into consideration?
On the back of the stem (the stem being very thin) the indented picture shows through in negative form, as one would expect. The artist seemed to have gone to lengths to try to transform the negative image into a picture that can be viewed in its own right. Please see final picture. This spoon seems to me to be more intricately decorated than most trefid spoons I have seen on line.
Regards
Jan
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A very handsome spoon, Jan. However, I suspect that it didn’t start life looking like this. My guess is that it was originally a plain spoon, probably Hanoverian pattern given its age, which was reworked during the Victorian period by having its handle hammered out and reshaped (hence the thinness) with the engraving and gilding added and possibly a bit of bowl alteration. There may well have been another to make a pair.
I may be completely wrong and would welcome other opinions.
Phi
Ah, those pesky Victoria engravers, embossers and repousse smiths. The work was difficult to do and labor intensive so why did they bother? Even art needed self improvement in their minds.
David Bexfield has a Tookey trefid spoon which will give you an idea of how your might have started out.
Ebay has a good selection although one of them looks a bit dicey-- rather as if the entire spoon might have been cast including the marks.
Because of the premium on both dognose and trefid especially provincial, you need your spidy sense out when looking at a lot of this gear.
A fair amount is known about James and Elizabeth and Thomas who is presumed to be their son. Where their workshop was, who they apprenticed with, well James and Thomas anyway, the wife just took over upon husband’s death using the classic diamond widow’s mark.
James’ spoons, both large and small turn up somewhat regularly as do marrow scoops and skewers. They continued to be very collectable in the Americas.Thomas Jefferson, if I remember, had a full set at Montecello.
By the time your spoon was fashioned originally, trefid was already heading for the smelter and Hanoverian was taking over. That only lasted a short while, replaced by old English and then fiddle which the French had fashioned about 80 years before the British used it regularly.
I must confess my personal bias is the Hanoverian. Sturdy, plain, usually not too worn possibly because it went out of fashion fast and a pleasure to handle.
Their appearance was also when people had finally all stopped carting their own cutlery to dinner parties and tables started to get larger so sets are not impossible to find although sometimes with different contemporary makers and the same badge. Forks however, are still in short supply.
Anyway, thanks for tell us about it. You didn’t show us the back of the bowl which may have started out with contemporary work on it. These fancy back spoons were sometimes purely decorative and other times conveyed a political message rather like toasting glasses with reference to the king over the water after Culloden and the nursery rhymes we now think are harmless, but back then could get you hanged for treason. Old King Cole, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, Mary Mary quite contrary could all get you in front of the beak.
CRWW
Thank you, Phil; with your invitation for other knowledgeable folks to come forward, Guildhall has stepped up in typical style: most readable and thought-stimulating. Thanks, Guildhall!
It seems James Tookey made the original spoon about six years into his stint as a largeworker. He became a smallworker in 1762, another six years after making the spoon.
We can speculate that the original spoon by Tookey (Hanoverian or whatever) could have been sold, and that some other silversmith did the reshaping, probably upon the owner’s request. Alternatively, Tookey might have retained possession of the spoon, with he himself undertaking the reshaping at some stage.
That is, if we agree Tookey did not make the spoon as a trefid in the first place. If he made it as a trefid in 1756 as the date letter says, that would have been decades after the trefid shape had already fallen from grace as a fashion item of flatware.
The Victorian era dawned in 1837. James and Elizabeth both died in 1773. Guildhall, do you think some silversmith in Victorian times would have taken a Tookey in Hanoverian pattern and executed a most elaborate design on the flat of the stem? For what purpose? Was this spoon perhaps used by some apprentice to practice his artistic talents on?
Is the face that of a bearded man or a lion?
Guildhall, in answer to your question: the design in the bowl is stamped in by hand, and the rear of the bowl is a negative of the front.
Why oh why are there so many uncertainties…? 
Regards
Jan
James Tookey appears to have died the year the diamond widow’s mark was registered for Elizabeth, 1767-8
Elizabeth died in 1773 according to the silver forum notes.
Somebody got ahold of a Hanovarian Spoon and decided to make a pig’s breakfast of the end. Calling it trefid is sort of inaccurate.
Why it was done? Probably somebody wanted a trefid spoon and someone else saw an opportunity to make a sale. It should have been re-assayed after the work was done.
Rules back then which were rather strict and very strictly enforced ---- you could get a free
one-way non-refundable ticket to Australia coach class — were being broken.
Today it’s a monetary penalty only. And probably only enforced in the event of outright fraud.
Why Hallmark? | Goldsmiths Hallmarking & Assay Office in London.
As to your last question. why is collecting beset with uncertainties? Again it’s basically 700 plus years of legislative history to protect the British Silver industry.
If the glass industry had had the same protection, George Ravenscroft would have had a global monopoly on what became lead crystal glass (30% lead, 70% sand) for a 100 years.
As it it only about 15 of his pieces survive from his Henley-on-Thames workshop and if you can find any more you’ve just put a hundred thousand pounds in your pocket.
Paintings are even more dicey. Historically they were the family snaps of the rich and would be famous. A relative of mine who because an Alderman of Oxford had such a profitable business at 115 High St. buying pictures, broke undergraduates had grabbed off the family pile walls, the long room behind his premises became an early home of the Oxford Union.
Today with scientific techniques which allow us not only to look at but through and under paint, we are discovering much art we have admired is “Barker of Bath-ed”.
Silver by comparison is relatively simple and made more so by experts who answer all our questions on this forum.
CRWW
Thank you Guildhall, you might have guessed that I also thought the trefid terminal design looked like a pig’s breakfast, but I was too pig-headed to admit it! Dang, that spoon is the oldest in my small collection and I had been thinking: “Here, this is the jewel in my metaphorical crown!”
I think if the terminal had not been squashed by a steamroller into a piece of silver leaf hardly one millimetre thick, and the monstrous face had been more delicately carved out (nay, even left out altogether) the spoon could have attracted some admiration, given its age.
My sole consolation is that I only paid very slightly more than the silver spot price going at the time.
Regards
Jan
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My immediate reaction to the face was that it looked like the Cowardly Lion in Denslow’s original illustrations for The Wizard of Oz, in 1900. Clearly, whoever did your spoon had visited Munchkin Land, and was heavily influenced by it.
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Spot on, Jeff! 
Jan
That Jan is how we all learn. And frankly giving us an opportunity to learn by your slight overenthusiam rather than by what is more usual — our own – is a gift.
I have actually now spent any free time I have had in the last few days looking at as much material as I can get a hold of on silver than may have been altered after it was made and by someone else.
It’s caused me to go lurking through the files of the London Goldsmiths authentication committee, to search both Victorian and modern court cases and the evidence presented, to read again Culme on the subject of 19th century fakery and to wonder aloud why auction houses, as Bonhams did in 2015, sell fake silver with declarations of case numbers and details of the fakes.
It had me reading with interest and respect silver sugar tongs specialist Hodges on different types of joins and his very useful classification of same: done during creation, done later, a fake and just a join.
It also got me thinking about silver which not only must be soldered to be genuine to the 18th century but is later produced if it isn’t. The standard Onslow design, which when invented could not be single cast or in any event was not, is a classic example. But there are others. I retain in my collection ringed skewers by Dorothy Langlands where the ring is soldered on and shows no signs of not being done at time of manufacture – about 1807.
So thus emboldened go forth and well, not multiply exactly, that was sort of the problem in the first place — go forth and collect.
But, and this is the thing, anything you look at which is 17th century has been looked at by dozens perhaps hundreds of collectors who for one reason or another have let it go.
Eighteenth century is a much richer picking ground simply because of volume and the beginning of mass production.
Nineteenth century, regency and Vicky gear, well there is so much of it and it is so heavy that unless you are buying at scrap or thereabouts you are paying over market.
Twentieth Century and those massive chests of mass produce assisted silver flatware, somehow they routinely go under scrap at auction. Just because the patterns are dead chintzy and the bother of having to clean and insure the stuff is way beyond most modern families, the stuff is still being given away.
Ex gratia, last week I picked up 149 pieces of Birks sterling flatware at $17 a peice. It sold originally for four times that and today you couldn’t even make those pieces for less than $120 each.
You can go and do the same thing this afternoon and the auction houses will slather after your future business instead of what they should be doing which is arresting you for grand larceny!
CRWW
Guildhall, this has been very enlightening. I (and I’m sure others who have followed our arguments) appreciate your contributions.
It was what you wrote about fakes that has inspired me to open a new topic on a sugar scoop that I have found to be enveloped in accusations of fakery. Perhaps if you are interested, you might have a look. Please see as soon as I can get it posted.
Regards
Jan
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Kind of you to say so. If we argued you did it so skillfully I didn’t realize we were in dispute.