The Vikings were celebrated spoon carvers and examples of decorated spoons have been found as far apart as Birka, west of Stockholm, across Scandinavia and to the UK city of York. Their decorated spoons used a technique called kolrosing where a pattern is incised in the spoon with a knife. Traditionally, charcoal or coal dust was then rubbed into the lines to accentuate the pattern.

The earliest mentioning of spoons in England comes from 1259, as a part of wardrobe accounts of King Edward I (1239 – 1307). First recorded in the Royal Collection in 1349, the spoon is described as of ‘antique forme’ and stylistically seems to relate to the twelfth century. It was possibly supplied to Edward’s forebears Henry II or Richard I.

In Medieval Europe, wooden spoons started to be replaced with more durable metal variants in the 15th century, though available merely for those with deep pockets. Spoons were used not only as a means of eating but as a mark of wealth and power.

Six small spoons were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose, the warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII wrecked in the Solent in 1545; three pewter and three wooden. The pewter spoons belonged to officers and their high tin/low lead content suggests they were made in England. The wooden spoons were made of Maple, and were used by the ordinary crew.

During the 17th century, funeral spoons became fashionable; spoons that were made for presentation to members of the deceased’s family as a memento-mori object, designed to remind the living that life is all too brief.