I have a favorite spoon.
Our daily-use flatwear is a set of silverplate that's not a set at all, but a carefully curated gay-ass collection of individual pieces, none of which are from the same set (except that one trio of iced tea spoons that are the perfect size for so many things). I have a set of silver, my grandmother's silver, which I am working up to using every day but so far, not ready. Many of them are former hotel, institution or private dining room pieces; quite a few of the others are monogrammed. I'm always on the lookout for good ones.
Of them all, there's one spoon that's my favorite: a snubnosed teaspoon in a relatively ornate pattern monogrammed with an S. It has clearly been injured somehow, and then the bowl of the spoon re-ground and polished so it could still be used. They're not expensive spoons, they're designed to be relatively accessible as an alternative to sterling silver, so the original owner could presumably have just purchased a new one. But they chose to mend it instead and put it back to work.
Somehow, I'm delighted by it: by the repair done, by the blunted quality of the resulting spoon, the whole deal. I'm always happy to draw it out of the spoon spot in the drawer and sometimes, when I think of it, I pick my favorite spoon on purpose.
Our daily-use flatwear is a set of silverplate that's not a set at all, but a carefully curated gay-ass collection of individual pieces, none of which are from the same set (except that one trio of iced tea spoons that are the perfect size for so many things). I have a set of silver, my grandmother's silver, which I am working up to using every day but so far, not ready. Many of them are former hotel, institution or private dining room pieces; quite a few of the others are monogrammed. I'm always on the lookout for good ones.
Of them all, there's one spoon that's my favorite: a snubnosed teaspoon in a relatively ornate pattern monogrammed with an S. It has clearly been injured somehow, and then the bowl of the spoon re-ground and polished so it could still be used. They're not expensive spoons, they're designed to be relatively accessible as an alternative to sterling silver, so the original owner could presumably have just purchased a new one. But they chose to mend it instead and put it back to work.
Somehow, I'm delighted by it: by the repair done, by the blunted quality of the resulting spoon, the whole deal. I'm always happy to draw it out of the spoon spot in the drawer and sometimes, when I think of it, I pick my favorite spoon on purpose.