viewtopic.php?t=65054&sid=1b19ac903f564 ... 805feaa943
Town mark Rotterdam, year letter Z for 1686, Dutch Lion and a rooster for Cornels de Haan.
The length of the spoon is 16 cm, weight 27 grams (1.7 grams/cm). The hand hammered bowl is made of thin silver and egg-shaped, the cast handle is straight and triangular with a lobe ornament near the bowl, it also has a zig-zag assay mark and remains of gilding .
We know from literature and 17th century paintings that this type of ornamental spoon was given and used on a special occasion. Not for eating but as a serving spoon for example to scoop a little brandy out of a traditional brandy bowl or perhaps serving other small delicacies .
The spoon is often provided with a special finial, like a hoof, bust, a personification (Love, Hope, Faith), an Apostle, or Biblical representation, or a profession.
We can find our particular spoon, a few times, in literature about antique silver.
In the book by N. I. Schadee, Zilverschatten, drie eeuwen Rotterdams zilver, Historisch Museum der Stad Rotterdam, page 70 Cat. No. 58
Description; gilded silver, unknown master's mark, a crowned snake, city hallmark Rotterdam, Dutch lion, date letter T=1681. Oval bowl, rat's tail, triangular handle, decorated with elongated acanthus leaf, finial goddess Flora with fruit bowl on head. Length 17.5 cm, bowl width 4.7 cm.
In the book by E.M.Ch.F. Klijn, Eet- en sierlepels in Nederland tot ca. 1850, Lochem 1987. On p. 223 the following spoon from Gouda:
Unfortunately, the figure is depicted unclearly and is called Flora.
Are they right here, are we looking at the goddess Flora or are they mistaken and is this mistake copied time and time again?
From a subsequent search for the depiction of Flora in, among others, Hall's Iconographic Handbook, Leiden 1993, we can only conclude that Flora is not depicted with a basket of fruit on her head, but as stated on p.108 of the aforementioned publication: People liked to use the figure of Flora to make a portrait of a woman. The person portrayed holds a bunch of flowers and sometimes has wreaths in her hair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_(mythology)
In my opinion, the qualification 'Flora' can be dismissed here (unless other information becomes available).
In the book Fries Goud en Zilver, deel III, by Johan R. ter Molen et al.
The spoon depicted here, front and back: On page 945 a spoon by an unknown silversmith from Workum, around 1660.
Workum, a charming city in Friesland that has had city rights since 1399. Located on the former Zuiderzee and surrounded by the Frisian lakes, Workum was once a thriving trading centre.
Here the finial is called a 'herme'. I cannot agree with that.
The original male herme, and from the Renaissance onwards, the female herme, does not correspond to the one depicted here. The herme is a very voluptuous pilaster, a woman or man who emerges from an ornament as an incomplete caryatid or atlante. The figure originates from Greek Hermes statues, which only depicted the upper body. In the Renaissance and certainly also in the Rococo, the motif is popular, because it allows the sculptor to interweave architectural elements with very free building sculpture. Caryatids and atlantes are usually free-standing shafts of columns. Hermesen are always pasted against a background, although in the Baroque they sometimes threaten to come loose from it.
Question: the finial, what are we looking at?
We see a kneeling woman in a short-sleeved blouse, we see her navel and she is wearing a skirt, and see a light imprint of her buttocks. Here she has frizzy hair and wide big lips. The finial on the Workum spoon, here she has the face of (native) young woman.
She is carrying a well-filled fruit bowl on her head, which she is holding with both hands.
We notice that the spoons with this type of finial were probably only made in the second half of the 17th century. The kneeling position could symbolize reverence, gratitude or submission. Could it depict an enslaved woman with African facial features, a local woman from our former colonies ?
The history of Dutch slavery is about slavery in the Netherlands itself, but also about slavery in the former Dutch colonies and the role of the Netherlands in this.
City of Rotterdam
Rotterdam was up to its ears in slavery. "Mayors, administrators, entrepreneurs and sailors, they all participated in the system of slave trade.
City of Gouda
Gouda's past does not immediately evoke associations with colonies and slavery. If you look around the historic city centre, you will nevertheless see signs; such as the monument for VOC seafarers Cornelis and Frederik de Houtman in the park of the same name, the homes of the Gouda elite at the time along the canals, and the buildings where colonial products such as coffee, tea, sugar and tobacco used to be sold. However, Gouda's colonial and slavery past is rarely mentioned in literature and archival sources have also hardly been researched. That is why it was decided to first carry out an exploration of this past. This exploration is set up as a collection of articles on various subjects by different authors.
City of Workum
Also in the societies on the Zuiderzee. It has been shown that the cities of Hindeloopen, Workum, Stavoren and Makkum were confronted with this in various ways in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many inhabitants of these places travelled on ships of the WIC and VOC to colonial areas. There they came into contact with enslaved people. On board ships, in ports or in colonial settlements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company
March 20, 1686; The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church strongly condemns the Transatlantic slave trade.
"On bended knee is no way to be free" - Peter R. de Vries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_R._de_Vries
Conclusion about the finial, for now we'll just stick with a kneeling woman holding a fruit bowl on her head.
Thanks to the contribution of art historian Rita Vastenholt and her knowledge of art and culture.
Peter