Souvenir Spoon Collecting

Souvenir Spoon Collecting is the hobby of collecting decorative spoons kept as mementos of places visited, typically made of sterling silver, nickel, steel or wood and displayed on a spoon rack rather than used for eating, with the bowl or handle often decorated with a local sight, a coat of arms or an associated character and sometimes inscribed with a production date. The first American souvenir spoons were made in 1890 by Galt and Bros of Washington, D.C., featuring the profile of George Washington, but it was the Salem Witch spoon, created by Daniel Low in 1891 and given credit for starting the souvenir spoon hobby in the United States, that popularized the practice, selling some seven thousand copies.