Dessert spoon

Status

Not on view

Label Text

Martha Washington's son, John "Jacky" Parke Custis, and his new wife, Eleanor Calvert, assembled an impressive array of imported English silver soon after they married in 1774. It included twenty-four dessert spoons featuring the Custis crest. This is one of sixteen French spoons made at a later date which descended in the family of Jacky's daughter, Eliza Parke Custis Law. She likely ordered them to supplement her inherited portion of her parents' eighteenth-century wedding silver.

See also dessert spoons, H-4802-H4810 and W-445/A-F.

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Datec. 1798 - 1809

Geography Made - France

Medium/TechniqueSilver

DimensionsOverall: 5 9/16 in. x 1 3/16 in. x 1/4 in. (14.13 cm x 3.02 cm x 0.64 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Ella Mackubin, 1956

Object numberW-1468

DescriptionDessert spoon with pointed oval bowl and rounded, downturned handle with faint midrib and plain edges; engraved on obverse of handle with the Custis family crest, the head of an eagle issuing from a wreath.

MarkingsFour hallmarks on the reverse of handle: official Parisian assay mark for standard silver, 950/1000, featuring the profile of a standing cock, facing left, with the number "1" at lower right, all in a canted-corner rectangle; partially obliterated, unidentified maker's mark features two pairs of mirrored hearts, all in a round-cornered rectangle; Parisian medium excise mark featuring a full-face view of a man's head, flanked by the numbers "8" and "5", in a circle; Parisian medium census mark in the shape of a human ear.

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