Description:
This wooden spoon features intricately carved floral designs on its handle and spoonbowl--front and back. The designs signal that an Inuit artist created the item to look like European silverware while using scrimshaw, a uniquely Inuit form of decoration. Prior to European arrival, Inuit individuals created metal spoons and other dining implements from meteorites. However, many stranded European explorers likely deposited silverware in the Artic, which were then integrated into Inuit communities beginning in the 1500s. After the permanent arrival of Europeans (in the forms of missionaries and traders) during the 1700s-1800s, European goods became common in Inuit households. Signaling a melding of European and Inuit customs, this spoon may have been sold to tourists or European settler colonists as a "curio," or possibly used by an Inuit individual. AP2018
Tags:
spoons Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1984.35.9 |
