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The Everlasting Mystery Of Teaspoons

May be silver plated. The green patina means a copper base, so it's probably steel plated first in copper and then in silver.
 
It is an actual silver hallmark and yes it did .. I found the details online just after I did my unsanctioned clean up job ;) .. I didn't keep a record of them though. I can't get a sharper in focus pic of the exact hallmark sorry.

edit: good news, the Mrs has found three earlier and more sharply in focus pictures of it .. pre me cleaning it ..

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The manufacturers were WEARS WHITE .. I imagine the company gave itself that name because electro silver plating was desirable for people who couldn't afford solid silver (most of us) so the daily WEAR and tear of cleaning them were being promised to remain "white" .. but that's just my theory.
Thank you SO much for the pictures! The sea glass looks quite lovely, especially combined with the spoon.

I googled "Wears White" +cutlery +England and found that old Wears White flatware is to be had from multiple websites selling vintage whatnots. I found reference on a couple of pages that "Wears White" is a mark of the company Viners in Sheffield.

Here's an example:

https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/213272-makers-of-ww1-knives-forks-spoons/

If you go half-way down the page, you'll find a message by someone with the user name of ServiceRumDiluted posted on 26 June 2014. In this message is the mention of "Wears White" as being a product of Viners.

Viners, I discovered, is still in business here:

https://www.viners.co.uk/

Of course, maybe many of you know this company already, but being a Yank, it's new to me. Maybe they'd be willing to say whether they made "Wears White" products. They were founded in 1908.

The second to the last post (by AJW) on the following page is by someone who believes that your theory on the meaning of the term is correct:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37681/what-does-wear-wite-mean
 
Thank you SO much for the pictures! The sea glass looks quite lovely, especially combined with the spoon.

I googled "Wears White" +cutlery +England and found that old Wears White flatware is to be had from multiple websites selling vintage whatnots. I found reference on a couple of pages that "Wears White" is a mark of the company Viners in Sheffield.

Here's an example:

https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/213272-makers-of-ww1-knives-forks-spoons/

If you go half-way down the page, you'll find a message by someone with the user name of ServiceRumDiluted posted on 26 June 2014. In this message is the mention of "Wears White" as being a product of Viners.

Viners, I discovered, is still in business here:

https://www.viners.co.uk/

Of course, maybe many of you know this company already, but being a Yank, it's new to me. Maybe they'd be willing to say whether they made "Wears White" products. They were founded in 1908.

The second to the last post (by AJW) on the following page is by someone who believes that your theory on the meaning of the term is correct:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37681/what-does-wear-wite-mean
Thanks for you research Kate, I did do some around the time I/we found the spoon but had forgotten it ..
 
Honestly, I go to Australia for a fortnight and I come back to a plethora of spoon-tales.

NB: Still seven, although I had high hopes of them breeding whilst I was away.

I have just come back from Australia too and also find myself perusing this plethora of spoon tales.

I can report that Melbourne has nicer spoons than Kiev where I live, although Melbourne has less socks on account of the popularity of sandals and it being a crime to wear socks with sandals.
 
Cycling to and from work at odd hours I sometimes see teaspoons lying in the street. I've picked one or two up and chucked them in the sink at t'depot in case we run out. Maybe I should get all the work teaspoons out and photograph them for the Board's delectation.
 
Cycling to and from work at odd hours I sometimes see teaspoons lying in the street. I've picked one or two up and chucked them in the sink at t'depot in case we run out. Maybe I should get all the work teaspoons out and photograph them for the Board's delectation.
Make sure there's no crack residue on them before use.
 
When I was doing replacement work at a nearby school I noticed what I thought was a perfectly good teaspoon in the sand under the play equipment.
I was told to throw it away as drug users would heat some type of drug in them.
 
When I was doing replacement work at a nearby school I noticed what I thought was a perfectly good teaspoon in the sand under the play equipment.
I was told to throw it away as drug users would heat some type of drug in them.

Yep, some people in my local got very affronted when the landlord chucked away all the metal spoons and started using plastic ones. Apparently they can only "stir their drinks" with metal ones, and it's absolutely nothing to do with cooking up smack. Sure, OK.

A friend caught Hepatitis, despite him being very careful about not sharing needles, syringes, or any other paraphernalia. Anything other than a spoon, which he claims was "clean" though not autoclaved, which had been used by someone who already had the condition. I'd leave all spoons alone that I found, if I were you, and be very careful about what else lurks in the sand. Some users are dirty, careless cretins who neither know nor care what happens to their kit once they have a hit.
 
I have just come back from Australia too and also find myself perusing this plethora of spoon tales.

I can report that Melbourne has nicer spoons than Kiev where I live, although Melbourne has less socks on account of the popularity of sandals and it being a crime to wear socks with sandals.
Oddly enough, I brought many pairs of socks back from Melbourne - bought as Christmas presents. But no spoons (still seven. I'm still watching. My brother visited briefly before New Year, and I double counted after he left, just in case he is some kind of teaspoon attractant. He isn't.)
 

This looks just like MY spoon! The one I can't find!!!

Yeah, but chopsticks are more versatile, as well as the eyes you can go for ears and nasal passages.
Chopsticks also make nice hair accessories -- you can hold up a bun with 'em.

Maybe it's just spoons in general.
Last year I found a salt spoon on top of some compost in the back yard.
It's not something I use, so maybe a bird had dropped it.
I was just thinking I don't know what became of it after I brought it in to clean it so maybe it has traveled somewhere else.

As if coffee spoons aren't small enough, salt spoons are even smaller! (A spnork would be even tine-ier . . . )
Is it possible that it was really a gnome shovel? Or perhaps it was playing a role in a fairy tale drama where the protagonist had to use a spoon to move a mountain of . . . before the end of the day or get eaten by an ogre? And that's why it disappeared?

Geez, it's already midnight, I can't believe I've spent the evening reading about tea spoons! (I blame politics . . . )
 
Geez, it's already midnight, I can't believe I've spent the evening reading about tea spoons! (I blame politics . . . )

Me too ... this MB is a welcome distraction .. I can only spend so many hours a day feeling full of despair!

Sollywos x
 
A couple of years ago I bought (or, to be accurate was bought) a set of teaspoons. Six, basic, ordinary teaspoons to replace the bastards that have crept away over the years. Within moments, I was down to five teaspoons - one thrown out, fell down the back of a cupboard, who knows?
I laboured on with my five teaspoons, until a recent visit from my brother (not a known teaspoon supplier). After he'd left, I found I was back to six teaspoons. And no, he didn't see fit to buy me a spoon, nor did he leave one of his own spoons (I don't even think he does travel with spoons, but who knows?). These spoons match. The missing spoon returns, hooray!

As of today, I have seven teaspoons. I just went to the teaspoon pot, where they live on my window ledge, and another one has arrived. Again, it matches the rest, is clean and unstained, and nobody except me has been in the house for weeks. Either the dogs are secret teaspoon smugglers, or the buggers are breeding.

Haunted teaspoons! :)
According to this intriguing review at the SPR website, your teaspoons may be walkabouts or turn-ups or even come-backs, depending. (If were a completely unknown spoon, that would be a windfall). https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/j...-relocate-and-why-it-really-happens-mary-rose
 
That is a great article! I need to go and count the spoons again now...

It also gives a term to the vanishing of my mother's engagement ring (which was in my jewellery box and now isn't).
 
Yes! Thank you, Ulaume, for posting that link. The article is a really intelligent and well written review of a book that sounds quite intriguing.
"Jott" is a great new term - Just One of Those Things.

I only experience disappearing objects when I knit, though; I lose a stitch somehow and then a few rows later it shows up again.
 
I have one of those open wallstands on which you can put a collection ornate tea spoons.
At the moment there are several missing. No mystery though as it's after a visit by toddler grandson who distributes them in various places and they will probably turn up eventually.
 
Years ago, I had two very annoying acquaintances who would snigger at memes, usually sexual, of their own devising or adoption. One was a perversion called "hot teaspoons and ice-cubes." If some unfortunate old dear was walking unsteadily down the High Street, she would be suspected of having her Thai Beads in or having been up all night with the hot teaspoons and ice-cubes. Both purely medicinal, of course!

I suppose I could now find out what on earth they were on about but I think I can guess. :nods:
 
Years ago, I had two very annoying acquaintances who would snigger at memes, usually sexual, of their own devising or adoption. One was a perversion called "hot teaspoons and ice-cubes." If some unfortunate old dear was walking unsteadily down the High Street, she would be suspected of having her Thai Beads in or having been up all night with the hot teaspoons and ice-cubes. Both purely medicinal, of course!

I suppose I could now find out what on earth they were on about but I think I can guess. :nods:

Sounds like the kind of chap for whom every school nurse would keep a teaspoon in a glass of iced water. (Y'know, so she could give him a swift crack on the erm, "head", if he got too animated during his medical. Apparently)
 
Sounds like the kind of chap for whom every school nurse would keep a teaspoon in a glass of iced water. (Y'know, so she could give him a swift crack on the erm, "head", if he got too animated during his medical. Apparently)
Nurse of my acquaintance told me she used a pen for the same thing.
 
I’ve never understood that particular trope. Were school nurses really examining boys’ undercarriage as a matter of routine back in the day? Because they certainly didn’t when I was at school, although rumours abounded to that affect.
 
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