Souvenir spoon: Saratoga Springs
Providence, Rhode Island
c. 1891
Maker
Attributed to Gorham Manufacturing Co. (1831-1986)
Measurements
5-1/4 in x 1-1/4 in x 1/2 in
Materials
Silver
Credit Line
Historic Odessa Foundation, The David Wilson Mansion, Inc.
Accession Number
1971.1103
Inscription
“SARATOGA SPRINGS” is across the bowl.
"STERLING" is on the back of the handle.
Provenance
Ex coll. Mrs. E. Tatnall (Mary Corbit) Warner
Comments
Saratoga Springs, known for its mineral waters, has been a resort destination throughout much of the 19th century and later. Mohawk, Abenaki, Mohican, and other Native American tribes inhabited the area beforehand. The spoon acknowledges Indian presence with a well-modeled full-body representation of a male holding a bow and wearing a quiver of arrows. The spoon handle is formed by a clutch of four arrows, the feathers of which join the ovoid bowl. The bowl is richly sculpted with various Indian-related images.
The souvenir spoon is unmarked by a maker, but it is illustrated and discussed in Anton Hardt, Souvenir Spoons of America (1891), p. 73. He identifies it as the work of Gorham Manufacturing Co. He notes too that the bowl is “an accurate reproduction of one of [Felix Octavius Carr] Darling’s illustrations in J. Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans,” published in 1872..
Bibliography
Accumulation & Display: Mass Marketing Household Goods in America, 1880-1920 (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1986), no. 203, p. 144.
