Franklin Porter Sterling Silver Arts & Crafts Baby Spoon, Danvers, MA, 1925-35

This lovely baby spoon was made by Franklin Porter whose silver was always well made and of heavy gauge. It has an oval bowl and a shaped handle and exhibits wonderful hammering throughout.

Franklin Porter (1869-1935) was an important arts & crafts silversmith working in Danvers, Massachusetts when this bowl was made. Porter trained at the Rhode Island School of Design.(1) However, he was fiercely independent and never joined Boston's Society of Arts & Crafts, eschewing the commercial pressures of that organization.(2)

This cute spoon is marked 'STERLING' and with Franklin Porter's trademark first used in 1925. It measures 4.5 inches long, weighs 0.90 troy ounces and is in very good antique condition. It has never been monogrammed.

Endnotes:

1. Jeannine Falino and Gerald W. R. Ward, eds., Silver of the Americas, 1600-2000: American Silver in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, (Boston: MFA Publications, 2008), pp. 359-360.
2. "Franklin Porter, Silversmith" by Helen Porter Philbrick in the Essex Institute Historical Collections (Vol. CV, No. 3, July, 1969), p. 211.