What is a caddy spoon for?

It measures dry tea out of a caddy, so the handle is short and the bowl broad. Nothing about it suits eating. The form is the single commonest named type on Sellingantiques, appearing in roughly a fifth of titles, and the bowls take all sorts of shapes: shovel, leaf, jockey cap, vine leaf, filigree, frying-pan, some with mother-of-pearl handles.

Are these spoons sold singly or in sets?

Both. Single specialist spoons carry a large part of the category, and "pair" appears in titles more often than "six". Cased and boxed sets are a branch of their own, mainly sets of six coffee, tea or grapefruit spoons, many with guilloche enamel handles. Sets of six and twelve with their original cases recur through the upper half of the sampled range.

How old are silver spoons on Sellingantiques?

The dealer-entered dates run from 1700 to 1960, with Georgian and Victorian the two commonest period labels and Edwardian third. Twentieth-century decades are well represented, the 1930s most of all, so this is not a purely antique heading. At the other end, the samples include 17th-century seal-top, trefid and slip-top spoons, and one Elizabethan seal-top dated 1585.

Which assay offices turn up on these spoons?

London and Birmingham are the two named most often in titles. Provincial marks are a real seam rather than a curiosity. Exeter, Newcastle, Chester and York appear, along with Scottish provincial towns including Aberdeen, Inverness, Elgin and Dundee, and Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin. Elgin and St Andrews are among the scarcest to surface.

Is all of it English sterling silver?

Sterling dominates, with "sterling" and "solid" between them accounting for a large share of titles against a small number saying plated or EPNS. Roughly one sampled piece in ten is not English. Scottish and Irish silver is well represented, and beyond Britain there is Norwegian 830S, Danish, Dutch, German, French, Russian cloisonné, American, Chinese export, Indian and New Zealand work.

What are the unusual types worth knowing about?

Condiment ware often arrives with its spoon still in it, so mustard pots, salts and cayenne pepper bottles sit inside the category. Then there are the one-offs that turn up once and not again: a moustache spoon, a folding spoon and fork, a runcible spoon-fork, a Maori jade-handled spoon, a laudanum spoon with a devil terminal, and a shoe-shaped spoon warmer. Christmas spoons dated year by year form a small run too.