posted 04-07-2009 08:08 PM            

It is marked "Hawkes Sterling". I think it is probably from the 30s/40s based on the style of markings, and is probably a cocktail stirrer that originally was sold with a Hawkes glass cocktail jug. Also the ball terminal of the handle would be an ideal muddler for mojitos, etc.

My friend was wondering who might have actually manufactured the spoon, with which glass vessel(s) it was sold, and from what era it hails.

Hawkes used to make several sterling-mounted pieces, of which the silver components were often by Durgin, but this spoon is too late for the Durgin period I feel.

Can anybody offer thoughts?

posted 04-07-2009 10:28 PM            

quote:

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Vase with Silver Base

Samuel Hawkes; T.G. Hawkes & Co.
United States, Corning, NY, 1939
Colorless lead glass, silver; blown, cut, copper-wheel-engraved, hand worked
H. 23.3 cm; Diam: 18.7 cm
98.4.9

After Thomas Hawkes died in 1913, his business was operated by his only son, Samuel. Samuel Hawkes, who had joined the firm about 1895, was trained as a businessman and not as a glass cutter. Nevertheless, he became a skillful designer, as this vase with an engraved spider web attests. Hawkes� customers included leading jewelers all over North America, and this piece was made for a traveling exhibition circulated by the Hawkes firm to jewelry stores in 1940 and 1941. It is probably the only example produced in this design. The vase features a silver base. The Silver Department of the Hawkes company created a number of sterling mounts, mostly on �rock crystal engraved� wares. Some of the objects displayed in the jewelry store exhibition were sold at that time, others were donated to a Florida museum, and the remaining pieces�including this vase�were sold from the showroom of Hawkes� Corning store.

Long description: Colorless lead glass, silver; blown, cut, copper-wheel-engraved, hand worked; bell-shaped vase with cut and polished top rim having a cut band of scallops and points just below the rim and two more in groves horizontally around the bowl, just above and just below a band of finely cut stars and hexagons; body engraved with a spider in a web with tree-branches at the edges of the web; silver foot rim fits over flat knob base.

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Thomas G Hawkes appears in the 1870 U S Federal Census for Corning, New York as a clerk along with a glass manufacturer named C F Houghton. I only mention this because it might be significant to glass collectors.

Purely as a matter of coincidence, I just sold a stirrer like the one in this posting, but with a more modern sterling mark and nothing else.

posted 04-08-2009 07:45 AM            

I found a stirrer on a website similar but the bowl of the spoon was more oval like a martini stirrer. Maybe this had a different use.

posted 04-08-2009 06:49 PM            

From "The American Cut Glass Industry T.G. Hawkes and his Competitors" by Jane Shadel Spillman, pg. 260:

"By 1913, Hawkes had started its own department for silver mounting and, although Gorham continued to buy glass from both Corning firms, Hawkes no longer purchased silver mountings."