Found old spoons buried. Any ideas?

Although the EBay link I posted is listed as a Chinese item, the spoon has the Korean flag on the back. I think that suggests the listing being a Korean item, not Chinese.

 

I am really leaning towards these being really old Chinese rice spoons. Three of the spoons have half-moon handles, which I have not been able to find except for the listing you posted. The three other spoons I have, have square handles, but one of them has the Asian mark on it. All spoons have the same style handle to bowl connection, which looks like the picture in the listing. They were found only a few thousand feet from the railway line, all together, where I can imagine Chinese workers camped. It would have been about 500 feet off the main road. They are all different, which means they were either dropped by a camp kitchen or they were someone's collection from 100 years ago. The listing you posted might be Korean, but China borders Korea, so I would think that their styles would be similar.

What does everyone think? This has been a crazy day of spoon education!

 

Would be nice if actual sizes were given, and how you determined that one spoon is silver (personally, would think the all the larger ones nickel silver/paktong).

As suggested, the 'Antique Chinese' set is a typical Korean chopstick and spoon set (sujeo), the modified design of the flag indicating 1948+ South Korean. Asian characters are a mystery to me, but would guess yours are Korean rather than Chinese, and wouldn't really know the dating - they are usually in the area of 9" and from the quarter used for scale, guessing they're around that...

These brass pieces on Etsy is described as 'antique', but that means nothing (the "Stainless Steel Enamel Handle" seems to be an error):

https://www.etsy.com/listing/740715..._sold_out_detail=1&ref=anchored_listing&frs=1



~Cheryl

 

Hi Cheryl,

Here are the sizes +/- 1/16":

8.5" X 1.75"
8.5" X 1.75"
6.75" X 1.5"
8.25" X 1.75"
8" X 1.75"
8" X 1.75"

As you can see, other than the 6.75" they are very close. At first, in the field, I thought they were all from a set but then has I looked at them more closely when I got home and the bowls and handles are all slightly different. Three are somewhat square, but three are half-moon. These were buried in the ground, undiscovered, for a long time. But not so long that they started to fall apart. I would say 100-120 years. It's hard to say about the one that might be silver. It is still shiny and generally being in the ground does not affect silver items. I just dabbed it with silver polish and nothing happened. I'm not sure what to make of that.

 

Why would a Korean item have a Chinese FU symbol on the bowl?

 

I think that 120 years ago, Korea and China probably had similar utensil styles being close to each other. The eBay item might be Korean, but mine is Chinese.

 

Wow, this is very interesting.
I grew up in Western Pennsylvania myself, and I'm very sure that no rail lines in PA were built by Chinese workers.
I would agree with @lizjewel , about the origins of these spoons.

 

@stracci - you are probably right. A paper on the topic said that Chinese laborers were contracted to work on Pennsylvania railroads, but there is no evidence they showed up. Where Chinese laborers did show up in Penn was in the cutlery industry in Beaver Falls, PA, about 10 miles as the crow flies from Zelienople. Interesting, even if coincidental.

 

Now THIS is interesting! Great sleuthing, @smallaxe!

 

Way out of my comfort zone, but have seen Chinese characters on Korean silver, understood that until a few decades ago, Chinese characters were used in the Korean language (also Japanese and Vietnamese) - Had to look it up, but 'Hanja' is the form...


https://www.wordsense.eu/福/


https://www.koreanwikiproject.com/wiki/복

Not sure I understand how you're determining their time in the ground, but regardless, they are not typically Chinese. They're the size I'd expect for a Korean spoon, and doubt there's much significance in flat top as opposed to rounded. What kind of silver polish are you dabbing it with? Silver polish is a fine rubbing compound, dabbing wouldn't have any effect - are you using something like Tarn-X? As for age, would want evidence of whether Chinese workers used similar spoons, or how far back similar form Korean spoons were produced before assigning them any specific history...





Can't say I see anything about these spoons that makes me think they're European, they are not Puritan spoons - even discounting the Asian character present on one, the construction, proportions and size are just not right, regardless of material. They have very long handles and are long in general, they are relatively thin with shallow bowls, they do not have the strengthening V-shape drop or rat tail that would be usual, or any other characteristics that I'd expect. And they also have nothing to do with slip-top spoons, which have sturdy post-like stems with the top cut at an angle (the name comes from being cut like a slip would be cut from a plant stem/branch).


Back view of mid 17th century English silver Puritan spoons, about 7" long:



Front view of another similar English silver Puritan spoon:



And a smaller one:



Two 17th c. Dutch Pewter, a bit under 7":




~Cheryl

 

I'm no expert on Chinese spoons, but they're not English, the shapes are all wrong. Stems are far too narrow, bowls are wrong and as Cheryl of course rightly says, there is no strengthening at the bowl joint. Those would not have lasted five minutes in your average 17th or 18th C kitchen. They'd bend. Rice, I can see working.

Bit bemused at the idea that English spoons aren't pointed.

 

@Ownedbybear
English silver soup spoons were often in a style without a marked point.The pattern Rattail by Wilton House [1930's], made in Sheffield, is but one example:
http://lizjewel.com/silver/rattailwiltonhousesoup.jpg
http://lizjewel.com/silver/rattailwiltonhousebackpattern.jpg
Lancashire Lily [Sheffield] is another:
http://lizjewel.com/silver/lancaslilyovsoup.jpg

I do agree that the thin-stemmed spoons discussed here may be of Oriental origin, rice spoons. As for winding up in Pennsylvania, USA, it's not so unusual.

The railroad built there may not have any Chinese labor that can be traced, however, Chinese immigrants did other work too. Laundry, food service, construction, in the boom towns that sprang up when the railroads were being built. There were plenty of Oriental immigrants around almost anywhere in those days, not just working on the railroads. Ergo, their cutlery would have been around too.

 

Soup spoons, of course, but that's not a general shape, it's specific to function, and of a higher class for want of a better term. That style also came in far later: it was an early Victorian fanciness, like so much else, and persisted.

A kitchen spoon would be pointed.

As to workhouses, those did not exist before the 1834 Poor Law, so a colonial spoon would hardly have been used in one. Their function was not to pay off debts, either: the debtor's prison housed those unfortunates. Workhouses were for those unable to support themselves.

 

@Ownedbybear I stand corrected re workhouses being for those who couldn't support themselves. However, let's not split hairs about what consisted colonial styles in housewares.

If the 1834 Poor Law started the proliferance of poor houses, what is to say that old cutlery of the cheapest kind wasn't relegated to them?

We use cutlery today that is over a hundred years old, call it antiques.

If old cheap cutlery imported from Korea, China in the colonial heydays of the British Empire was still laying around, it could very well have wound up in poorhouses, prisons, cheap eateries in the cities.

The Orient was then the go-to for the Empire, all kinds of manufactured goods were brought back along with the tea and spices. Oriental s c export porcelain [highly collectible today] in those days was used as shipbottom fillers and so cheap and ubiquotous that it often was treated like paper plates today, used once and discarded. No doubt cutlery followed suite too.

 

The UK didn't import cheap cutlery from Korea or China, we made it here. Sheffield was the power house of that. We'd invented the processes for one thing.

I'd hardly call Chinese export porcelain cheap: it was commissioned by the upper middle and upper classes with fabulous armorial designs.

I think you're conflating it with the eggshell stuff which did end up as effectively ballast in the late 19th, as did pottery storage jars in the 17th and 18th. You find great lumps of those latter on the Thames foreshore. Said storage jars came over full and ended up empty.

 

I was referring to:
https://aarf.com/fecant98.htm
.... Chinese Canton ware was shipped to Europe and America in the holds of cargo ships which resulted in its becoming known as "ballast ware".
Of course there were different qualities in export ware, just like any other goods, from R.Royce to K-ia [no free adverts here]. The fine armorial ware was prized whereas the cheap Canton of lower quality became the ware for the masses and treated accordingly.
I can't find the exact quote where I read how the lower-end Chinese export porcelain was thrown out after single use but, rest assured, I did not make it up. It was probably in some old book I once read, even owned, but not anymore.

 

Canton wares weren't used as so-called ballast because they were cheap, though. It was because they could withstand water really well, being high fired and glazed. So, unlike more perishable items, they could be packed in the bottoms of clippers. I've never heard of porcelain being single use in the UK.

 

Re Single Use of Chinese cheaper porcelain wares: I read that about the Boston [USA] importers/exporters of oriental wares. When they had unpacked so much "ballast" porcelain they couldn't always find more customers for it. So they gave it away to whomever wanted it who often used it for banquets and the like and then discarded it. Wish I could find where I read that!

 

not unusual. also family names are written in Chinese to this day. could well be double-functional for outdoor working places and journeys - handle can also be used as stick.

 

This is all great information everyone. Thank you very much for helping me out. I am going to do research into Korean spoons and see what I can find out.

I have a lead test kit. I am going to dab each spoon and see if there's any lead in them. I am suspecting that the one that I thought was silver is actually what they call "shiny pewter" as there is a hard white crust at the end on the handle.

Can someone tell me the difference between "latten" and
"natures guilding?" I saw these mentioned in an article and it looks like one or two of the spoons are latten.

I will report back my findings!