A pair of spoons

colher (25),
originally uploaded by monicaA.

The image is pretty bad, but it's what i can get with a Nokia3600 phonecamera.

Starting (very) slow

Time for my hobbies as been very scarce and since they stole my camera it makes it even more dificult to document my collection. Anyway, with the help of my camera phone and flickr i'm trying to give the first steps: just check my tag for spoons, to see some of the photos i took from them.

Ways to showcase spoons...?

Been thinking about ways of showcasing my almost 200 spoons... They have been waiting on piles of shelves, in a much to small house. Any ideas?

[picture in DirectAuction]

Spoons on Desaru Ship

Acording to the findings of Sten Sjostrand on the Desaru ship ("The 'Desaru ship' is a Chinese vessel which sank in the 1840s with a cargo of Chinese ceramics."), and since they have found ceramic spoons in the ship, this could mean that, chinese ceramic spoons have around 200 years of existence. I was told, when i started my collection, that they could not have more then 100 years.

"The Desaru cargo included various types of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Blue and white spoons were most numerous; more than 50,000 pieces were found."

This also means, that by the time the ship sank (1840s), chinese ceramic spoons were already mass-market.

[in Maritimeasia, view bigger foto]

About my interest in Chinese Spoons

A couple of years ago, in 1988, I went to Macau, in southeast China (today, RAEM), following my expat husband. As my carrear was put to still, I needed something to keep my mind occupied with, so I would do long walks in a much to small territory (22Km square), and absorve all the collours, smells, and sounds that were allian to me.

In those random walks, scanning all the new things found for the first time, i've come to notice all the different spoons, in assorted settings, laying on the floor in, all to often, dusted small stores.

As my stress was growing for not being abble to find a job, mainly because i didn´t talk the local language (at the time, cantonese), my only interest became collecting all the many different spoons i could lay my eyes on, as long as they weren't expensive (most of them around 1MOP, or pataca, equivalent to 0,1 Euros).

I've left Macau in July, 1999, and since then i've been thinking of discovering more about chinese spoons. Also, trying to make all those spoons look like a collection and not merely a bunch of different spoons.

I though that this would be a great tool to register my findings about it, and to share some of them with other people that may have similar interest... in good time, spare time, would come here to join all the pieces and bits that will make up my chinese spoon collection.

If you know something about the origins of chinese spoons, do share it with me :-)