Slide #14
of 16

     By about 1630 a completely new pattern of spoon began to appear with a simple, flat stem. This may be linked to the shift to laying the table with flatware for your guests rather than expecting them to have their own. It is now known as the Puritan because of its simplicity and because its peak popularity coincided with the Commonwealth when Puritanism was at its strongest in England.

     As can be seen, the date letter is again at the top of the stems because the spoons have no finial. The three examples here are, from top to bottom:

• Jeremy Johnston, London, 1661, 7.4 inches

• Steven Venables, London,1651, 5 inches

• purportedly by IV (Joseph Vaughan or John Vaughton), London, 1631, 6.5 inches - but this one almost certainly a forgery.

     I should have realized that the 1631 spoon was "too good to be true" when I bought it years ago. A 1632 fork in the Victoria and Albert Museum is the earliest genuine example of the Puritan form that I have actually seen. The hazards for the collector of early spoons include complete forgeries like the example here, later spoons that have been re-shaped and genuine early spoons that have been "improved" by the addition of a new finial, typically converting a seal top to a potentially more valuable Apostle spoon.