Souvenir Spoon Collecting – Origins and Current State

Souvenir spoon collecting is quite common today and has been since the 1890’s; even the newspapers in the past have run items on the “souvenir spoon craze.” In America, there were thousands of special spoons made as souvenirs that could be collected and was a fad that was brought to America by two silversmiths that traveled to Europe often. This was modeled after Europeans who purchased spoons when traveling to different cities to remind them of their visit. The silversmiths were M.W. Galt of Washington D.C. and Seth F. Low of Salem, Massachusetts that brought back from Europe the idea to collect spoons and also designed and crafted some of the most popular ones in history.

Once spoon collecting gained traction, some of M.W. Galt’s were extremely popular to collect, because he had crafted spoons that were marked as early as May, 11, 1889 with the image of George Washington. There was also a spoon crafted by Galt with the image of Martha Washington around the same date. Today, these spoons are highly collectable.

Seth F. Low on the other hand designed the first of the Salem Witch souvenir spoons that were marketed as of October 1, 1890. These spoons were manufactured by the William B. Durgin Company of Concord, New Hampshire. The handle of the spoon has the figure of a witch, the word Salem and three witch pins. These spoons were made in three sizes: the teaspoon, coffee spoon and an orange spoon that had a teardrop shaped bowl.

The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair had a spoon for collectors, which not only had an ornate handle but the bowl was also ornate and this grew in popularity with later spoons having a watermelon slice in the bowl, along with an ornate handle, a spoon with Christopher Columbus, a bowl with an Indian portrait or an enamel bowl with a rose that was manufactured in Oregon. There were spoons that had both handle and bowl decorated to match a historical event or a place of interest, like a town, city or building.

Today, the spoons are just as ornate as in the past and there are just as many or even more people that collect them. There are even spoon holders to show the spoons making, them a piece of home decoration. There are people today who collect spoons from places they visit and there are also collectors of spoons from the past. These spoons from the past are not as plentiful as current ones but they hold a place in history and were manufactured in a completely different manner than the decorator spoons today. The works of art from the past also hold a much higher price and their worth is determined by the type of spoon, the craftsman and the overall condition. Information on the worth of collector’s spoons can be found both in books and on websites, which can help determine the worth of a collector spoon from the past, from the rarest to the most common ones.