Old Print Ad: Salem Witch Spoon (1891)

They've finally come up with an easy way for me to visualize Bridget Bishop's hanging whenever I stir my tea.

According to silvercollecting.com, Daniel Low and Co., a jewelry store established in Massachusetts in 1867, started a spoon-collecting craze in the U.S. with the introduction of their “Salem Witch Spoon,” playing up the town’s history of lady-hanging to sell a piece of cutlery. The store, housed in the First Church Building, offered a variety of spoons ranging in price from $1.25 to $2.50. An excerpt from the 1891 ad:

“An interesting mania, yet having its useful side as well, is the collecting of odd silver spoons. The idea is too get them from as  many different localities as possible, but particularly from places having some special Historical value. One of the presents received by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on his eighty-first birthday was a gold-lined silver spoon, the handle of which bears a witch on a broomstick.”

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