Silver, Spoons, & Souvenirs

Dad, Mom, and Me traveling with 
our station wagon in the background.

 Souvenirs

When I was a little girl, my parents loved to take my sister and I traveling. We usually drove to our vacation destinations using our trusty Chevy station wagon with the fake wood paneling sides (there was more than one!). This was the time before seatbelt laws and if we were traveling late at night (or through the night!) the back seat folded down and we could unroll our sleeping bags and sleep prone in the back. It was also before air conditioning, but the windows rolled down (using our arm muscles to rotate the knob) all the way flush with the door to give us plenty of wind!! 

Souvenir shops were a big thing and you could buy pencil cases or t-shirts, things that won’t really last the test of time. I’m not exactly sure who gave my mom the idea, but for each place–mostly states, but some cities–she encouraged me to buy a spoon as my souvenir. I collected them well into my 30’s and filled two huge spoonracks which later included countries and European cities.  I don’t display them anymore, but I still own them. There are a few special and really interesting ones, but most of them are still pretty cheap souvenirs. 

Spoons

A friend of mine shared with me that she has started taking 10-15 minutes each day to purge 3 things from her house. She goes to a drawer or cabinet everyday and finds at least 3 things to donate or toss. That sounded like a great idea to me and while I will not commit to doing this everyday, I’m happy to do it on the weekends. One weekend a couple weeks ago, I chose a cabinet in our built-in china cabinet. I quickly and easily found 3 items to donate and toss, to be honest I found lots more than 3!! 

I did also find a bag of silver trinkets that had been passed down to me from my grandmother through my mom. What a find, and what fun I had!! The internet is an incredible resource and it was well used that day as I was tracking down companies, dates, and patterns. There were some unique items, like my grandmother’s Japanese Sterling Silver 950 Demitasse Bamboo Spoons Set. I don’t know for certain, but I’m going to guess that these were purchased in the 1950’s when my grandfather was stationed in Japan and my grandmother and mother were with him. My grandmother talked about the entertaining she would do (usually with the military families) and how far the American dollar went in Japan at that time. 

The real fun for me  began when I came across….my great-grandmother’s (Florence Stoddard Leach) souvenir spoon collection!  (Note: This 15 minute task became an 8-hour funfest, the real reason why I’m not going to commit to this everyday!) I remembered seeing, years ago, a silver spoon engraved with “Flossie” (her nickname) and 1901. You might remember from an earlier post about the Buffalo Pan-American World’s Fair, that my great-grandmother graduated from Reed City High school in 1901, so I imagine this was to commemorate that occasion. 

Reed City High School c. 1900

What I didn’t remember is the approximately dozen other silver spoons from different places and times in her life. I’m not done cataloging and researching all of them, but in the process I’ve learned a few things that might be helpful to others with their silver identification.

Silver

Fish slicer

My great-grandmother, Florence, was born in 1882, so I imagined that most of the spoons were collected or given to her early in life. Her husband died in 1919 and I can believe that her traveling days with two young children were over and resources a little slimmer. This does still create a 40 year window to date them. Unlike my souvenir spoons, these were all sterling silver!

I found an incredibly robust website that was helpful because not only does it provide a catalogue of companies and their histories but also images of many of their maker’s marks. Quite honestly, anything that was ever made from silver from most countries in the world can be found here, including flatware patterns, egg boilers/coddlers, fish slicer, tankard (became a beer mug), waste bowls, and, yep, even nipple shields!  (I will leave that last one for you to look up, or just imagine.)

(Some examples of maker's marks).

It was fun to search the images and look for which company produced which spoons to help date them. Here’s one from Saginaw Michigan. It is identified as having been produced by the Alvin Co, using the silver marking emblem. Created as Alvin Mfg. Co. in Invington in 1886. Moved to Long Island NJ in 1895. Name changed in Alvin Silver Co. in 1919. Now a division of Gorham Corporation. 

One, which is from Buffalo, NY was not an official Pan-American souvenir spoons, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t purchased at that time in Buffalo.

And this one from Toronto. I’m thinking this one might be from their honeymoon in which they spent 6 weeks traveling to New York City and probably went through Canada on the way.

Or this one, was engraved with “L” for Leach in 1907 on a Reed & Barton sterling silver Parisienne pattern spoon. They were married in 1905 and had their first child, Virginia, in 1906 who died in 1908. I have no idea the significance of the date.

Or this one, which is haunting me because I have no idea what it could mean. It says “Ireland” and also “1000 Islands”. I don’t see how they are related, but I’m pretty sure that this was during their honeymoon that they stopped to the 1000 Islands! I’m fairly certain that they were still British islands and maybe there was an island named Ireland? The Islands were a popular tourist attraction in the Victorian era and has inspired me to plan a trip for my husband and I this summer to see 2 of the castles still on the islands.

But the most fun one was this spoon. Not so much because the spoon is beautiful, but because I have discerned where it was from. At first glance, I saw “mining” and assumed it was another spoon from the Michigan College of Mines, where my great-grandfather attended. But on closer inspection, I found that it was labeled “Mines & Mining Building”. I learned from my research on the Pan-American World Fair that a mines & mining building was a common feature at a World’s Fair. So, was this a spoon from the 1901 Buffalo Pan-American World Fair? After much research and searching, no!! It is from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair!! I have no idea who went to that World Fair or how this spoon came to be in Florence’s collection, but maybe it was what sparked her curiosity in the World Fairs? 

Mines & Mining 
Building at the 1893 Chicago World Fair

Depiction of the Mines & Mining Building

This provided me with a day's worth of fun and learning about the history of silver, spoons, and souvenirs! Investigating the history of the spoons and my great-grandmother's collection is providing a glimpse into her travels and her life around the turn of the last century!!! I guess if I can't have photos to chronicle her life, souvenir spoons isn't such a bad substitute.