EPHEMERA: Sterling Silver SBA Teaspoon.
(Gardner, MA: Frank W. Smith Silver Co., 1892).
5 5/8" long x 1 1/8" wide (at bowl) sterling silver spoon the maker's mark --a small "S" in a circle with decorative curls at either end--identifies the spoon as the product of Frank W. Smith Silver Co., of Gardner, Massachusetts (founded in 1882, with sterling flatware and hollowware as the principal products). The full-figure (FF) embossed design on the obverse of handle features a cameo portrait of Susan B. Anthony surrounded by a delicate floral vignette. Beneath the portrait appears Anthony's name in a semi-circle; and centered in the narrowing part of the stem is the slogan "Political Equality". Very high relief and wonderful patina, especially on plain bowl. Spoon in excellent condition but for about a half-dozen slight horizontal scratches spanning reverse of handle, none descending below 1/2" of handle tip. Encased in custom-made felt-lined clamshell case in navy cloth.
While ephemera have always been a part of political campaigns, the suffragists carried the idea to new extremes, truly suffusing the culture at every level with their message. "Votes for Women" and other suffrage slogans not only appeared on buttons and armbands (as they had in all past presidential campaigns), but on megaphones, blouses, brushes--and spoons. As Flexner and Fitzgerald note in Century of Struggle, "nothing had previously approached these [later suffrage] campaigns in concentrated effort, organizational detail, imaginativeness of the propaganda and education."
The choice of the sterling silver spoon as a miniature billboard for the suffragist message is not as anachronistic as it might at first appear. While so diminutive and precious a "media" seems unconducive indeed for bearing a strident message, in fact the history of the silver spoon is anything but apolitical. As early as the 18th-century, the British imprinted spoons with symbols of loyalty to particular political causes, a practice that had its roots in the ubiquitous but surreptitious cipher systems that proliferated during the English Civil War.
Spoons were not only used to advertise political and public events, however. For centuries they had been given to mark important occasions in personal life as well, particularly births and marriages. We know that since the 16th-century, for example, spoons were given at baptisms--from whence comes our cultural association of spoons with birth, renewal, and transition, as well as our expression "born with a silver spoon in one's mouth." As baptism spoons usually bore the cast figure of an apostle, so the image of Susan B. Anthony commemorates her role in spreading another kind of gospel altogether.
The first American silver spoon--bearing an image of a "witch"--was produced by jeweler Daniel Low to commemorate the Salem witch trials. This spoon became wildly popular, so much so that within months a craze for unusual spoons swept the country. The frenzy began around 1890 and peaked in 1896, but continued nearly unabated until 1920. Spoons were soon made as souvenirs for everything from historical events, political campaigns, tourist attractions, religious occasions, world's fairs, dedications of new monuments and buildings, advertising businesses, commemorating trades and industries, and celebrating famous persons. A number of "high profile" political issues (not least of them women's suffrage), as well as an engaged and well-informed citizenry, made the 1890's such a conducive a period for the production of the commemorative spoon. "The transformation in political material culture during this period," writes historian Roger A. Fischer, "was little short of revolutionary" (Tippecanoe and Trinkets Too: The Material Culture of American Presidential Campaigns, 1828-1984).
As Selling Suffrage suggests, ephemeral political items also tied political identity to consumer identity. as women became increasingly economically enfranchised, the purchase and display of suffrage ephemera allowed them to publicly declare their affiliation in the marketplace of ideas. Perhaps equally important, the material culture of suffrage "brought the movement to a mass audience of non-suffragists and allowed them to participate in suffragists' infectious spectacles" and engage their ideas (124). While buttons and banners were the most common medium for the suffrage slogan, these more precious objects clearly also played a role in spreading the idea of "political equality."
It is worth emphasizing that these objects were precious and collectible in their own day as well as our own. Silver Spoon World records that the retail price for silver spoons during the 1890-1920 time period ranged from $2 to $6; approximately equivalent to $96 to $240 today--"hardly 'pin money.'" That an ordinary worker might spend that much on a "souvenir" points to the importance of these commemorative spoons to the individual and the community. They were precious possessions, usually kept for life, rarely if ever "used" in the utilitarian sense of that term. Rather, they were displayed proudly in the family home and passed on as heirlooms.
Sadly, the ingenuity and ubiquity of these colorful items of political propaganda during the suffrage campaign-indeed the first modern political campaign of the 20th-century--is almost matched by their current rarity. All early suffrage ephemera has become extremely scarce on the market, and antique silver spoons in particular (those over 100 years old) are quite difficult to locate. Delicacy subjected many of those few to being lost or damaged. But perhaps the biggest contributor to the current rarity of antique silver spoons was the material demands of the two world wars, during which time thousands and thousands of spoons were consigned to the melting pot. The Depression as well forced many families who had resisted contributing their silver to the first war effort to melt down their silver after all. Today antique silver spoons are highly collectible, and a spoon of such historical interest and in such good condition is a particular treasure.
See: Century of Struggle; Selling Suffrage (pg. 124); Tippecanoe and Trinkets Too: The Material Culture of American Presidential Campaigns, 1828-1984 (pg. 144), American Silver Manufacturers: Their Marks, Trademarks, and History, pg. 168. http://www.souvenirspoons.com/; http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Arc/3707/spoon.html; http://www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/6232/history.html; http://hometown.aol.com/McSpoons/home.html; http://www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/6232/political.html.
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