Section of a spoon handle 1774

This section of a spoon handle was made from silver, sometime in the 18th century, by Daniel-Toussaint Desmares. It is a fragment, but it speaks volumes about social conventions of the time, and the institutional control of craft guilds in France. The stamps on this fragment tell us a lot about the culture of production in the 1700s. They are hallmarks that can be traced through guild records and the records of royal assayers, who verified the quality of the silver. The image of the crowned ‘P’ indicates this object was made in the city of Perpignan. We might think of spoons as simple utensils, but this silver spoon was an index of social status, and participation in the guild system. It reminds us that even the smallest objects can reveal a dense network of cultural and economic practices. The historian uses these kinds of clues to reconstruct the past.