(True Treasure Books, 2008)

Since recreational metal detecting began some 40 years ago, a vast quantity of interesting artefacts have been uncovered. Old or even ancient cutlery are fairly frequent finds by metal detectorists, so it came as no surprise that Simon, a friend of mine, found a complete old base metal spoon on a beach with his metal detector. The real surprise was that we struggled to find any information to identify it and clearly others had met the same problem for I spotted an old base metal spoon, wrongly identified at an exhibition.

Around a hundred years ago, C J Jackson wrote The Spoon and its history, a paper covering mainly silver spoons from ancient times until the nineteenth century and F G Hilton Price wrote Old Base Metal Spoons, covering base metal spoons between the 14^th and 18^th centuries. Although there have been a number of books covering eighteenth and nineteenth century spoons since, there seems to have been very little coverage of earlier spoons. This is understandable to some extent as earlier spoons are not readily available to most collectors. The silver varieties are scarce and command very high prices, while almost all the base metal varieties have been lost or melted down and generally the only examples around have been excavated.

Nevertheless, I thought it would be worthwhile to produce this illustrated guide to spoons for finders, collectors, family historians and anyone interested in spoons from earliest times to the nineteenth century. I have basically divided the book into three sections: the first covers the development of spoons, particularly silver, from earliest times; the second covers old base metal spoons and the third, some continental spoons, many of which have been found in Britain. I sincerely hope that whatever old spoon you may come across or want information on, you will find it in this book.

Soft Cover, 135 black and white illustrations, A5 size (210mm x 146mm or 8.25 inches x 5.75 inches),          88 pages.  ISBN 978-0-9550325-4-7 £3.50