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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1978.495.56
Title
Spoon
Classification
Tools and Equipment
Work Type
spoon
Date
1st millennium CE or later
Places
Creation Place: Unidentified Region
Culture
Unidentified culture
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/278491

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Copper alloy
Technique
Cast
Dimensions
14.4 x 5.1 x 0.8 cm (5 11/16 x 2 x 5/16 in.)
Technical Details

Technical Observations: The patina is silvery with green, brown, and red corrosion. The majority of the bowl is missing. The spoon was made by casting the rough shape and then working to further shape the bowl of the spoon and finish the surface. The surface appears to have been silvered, but this was not confirmed by analysis.


Carol Snow (submitted 2002)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Formerly in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, no. 16.446.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Transfer from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
Accession Year
1978
Object Number
1978.495.56
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
The bowl of this fragmentary spoon was probably originally oblong. The handle, which is rectangular in section, is surmounted by a togate figure, possibly holding a bowl in the right hand and staff in the left. The right leg appears to be bent and in stride beneath the garment. The figure may have a cloak wrapped around the neck and be wearing some kind of headdress (1).

It is difficult to date this type of spoon closely, and it could have been manufactured in the Roman period or much later (2).

NOTES:

1. A spoon in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, inv. no. 48-2-188, also has a figural representation as a finial; see P. G. Warden, The Hilprecht Collection of Greek, Italic, and Roman Bronzes in the University of Pennsylvania Museum (Philadelphia, 1997) 71, no. A31. See also a fork with a figural finial in G. Zampieri and B. Lavarone, eds., Bronzi antichi del Museo Archaeologico di Padova, exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Padova (Rome, 2000) 205, no. 408.c.

2. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology example (supra 1) is dated to the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries CE, and its provenience is given as Orvieto. Compare the range of Roman spoons in M. Garsson, ed., Une histoire d’alliage: Les bronzes antiques des réserves du Musée d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne, exh. cat. (Marseille, 2004) 42, nos. 60-65. Other instruments from antiquity also have figural finials; compare a salve pestle from Ephesos with an Asklepios finial in E. Künzl, Medizinische Instrumente aus Sepulkralfunden der römische Kaiserzeit (Bonn, 1983) 49, fig. 17.1; and the original version of the stylus represented by Harvard’s replica 1965.86.


David Smart

Subjects and Contexts

  • Ancient Bronzes

Related Objects

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu