Overlaet Kim & Inneke Baatsen, "A spoonful of meanings? An analysis of the layered meanings of...

ESSHC Conference 2014 (Vienna) BAATSEN & OVERLAET

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A Spoonful of Meanings? An Analysis of the Layered Meanings of Silver Spoons in Sixteenth-century Mechelen

Inneke BAATSEN & Kim OVERLAET

* Paper presented at the ESSHC Conference (Vienna, April 23th - 26th, 2014) * Work in progress, please do not cite without permission of the authors.

In October of the year 1520, the crossbow guild of St George in Mechelen organized a lottery to

raise the association’s funds. The beautiful card announcing this event (Figure 1)1 proudly stated

that all participants could win one of the many beautiful and highly valuable pieces of silverware (‘vele

schone ende rijckelijcke prijsen van silvere’), such as silver plate, cups and dishes.2 Until 4 April,

1521, when the lots were drawn on the main public square of Mechelen, these splendid pieces of

silverware could be admired at the city hall. Whereas the most fortunate lot-buyers won massive

silver cups and goblets, less lucky winners had to be pleased with smaller items.3 This lottery,

however, was not unique in its kind. From the early fifteenth-century onwards, the Low

Countries saw the rise of lotteries as a popular means for public institutions, local and national

rulers as well as private investors, to raise money, to build chapels, almshouses or canals, or to

replenish funds in the treasury.4 Fortune seekers could come from a far distance, and were

attracted by a diversity of prizes, which usually ranged from cash money, annuities and life rents,

to titles and occupations.5 At the end of the fifteenth century, though, silverware commonly

accounted for the majority of rewards. Sixteenth-century lottery cards even suggest that by then

silver spoons generally formed the lion share of lottery prizes: they often functioned as

consolation prizes.6 In the 1548 lottery of the Bruges Bogaerdenschool no less than 150 silver spoons

– each weighing one ounce – were distributed among the participants.7 Moreover, whereas the

aesthetic qualities of spoons and plates could be ‘visually consumed’ when displayed in front of

the hall and by their depiction on the card, most lottery cards also made explicit references to

these silver objects’ weight and monetary value.

1 This card is currently part of the collection of the Rijksprentenkabinet in Rotterdam. 2 Huisman & Koppenol, Daer compt de Lotery, 21-22. 3 Jack Hinton has underlined the importance of this ‘visual consumption’ of silverware and has labelled it ‘aspirational consumption’. Hinton, ‘By sale, by gift’, 246. 4 Fock, ‘Zilveren prijzen’, 39-40. 5 See for more information on lotteries in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries the current research project of dr. Jeroen Puttevils, titled: ‘De lokroep van Vrouwe Fortuna: loterijen en economische cultuur in de 15de- en 16de-eeuwse Nederlanden’. (https://www.uantwerpen.be/nl/personeel/jeroen-puttevils/). 6 Fock, ‘Zilveren prijzen’, 40. See also: Huisman & Koppenol, Daer compt de Lotery. 7 One ounce of silver was equivalent to approximately 31 grams: Glanville, Silver, 7; Gailliard, Kronyk of tydrekenkundige beschrijving der stad Brugge, 210-211.


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Figure 1 : A detail of the lottery card of the crossbow guild of St George in Mechelen (1520)

Source: © Beeldbank Mechelen

Small wonder then, that historians studying the material culture of early modern cities in North-

West Europe have tended to concern themselves with the financial value of silver spoons.

Indeed, even (or perhaps especially) in uncertain economic circumstances, investments in silver

objects could prove lucrative, since they could be pawned or reverted back into cash when

needed, as they retained their intrinsic value (although the expenses made to its fashion, of

course, could not be recovered when melted).8 It is to economic historians’ credit that recent

scholarship considers the simultaneous use of money and silverware as means of payment, as a

key feature of the development of a nascent capitalist market in the early modern period.9 Silver

was the base metal used for coinage, but as coins were not always available, silver plate and cups

could have had the same monetary function in times of dearth. Craig Muldrew’s assessment of

how English society coped with cash shortages by forging complex credit relations and using

8 Muldrew, ‘Hard food for Midas’, 113; Goldberg, ‘The fashioning of bourgeois domesticity’, 135; Woodward, ‘Swords into ploughshares’, 183. 9 See for example: Clifford, ‘A commerce with things’; Muldrew, ‘Hard food for Midas’.


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alternative exchange goods such as silver objects, convincingly underlines the considerable

economic value silver spoons had in this period.10 In the context of a growing capitalist market

going hand in hand with new institutions and newer forms of consumerism, an intensified

(inter)national trade sped up the ‘commoditization’ of goods, which rendered silver spoons

(along with other silver objects) exchangeable for other goods with equivalent values.11 As a

consequence, silverware usually was counted amongst the most valuable possessions of a

household. Already in the famous Bouc vanden Ambachten, a late fourteenth-century didactic

manuscript from Bruges, we find an admonition telling that silver spoons were not to be stored

with the common daily dishes and spoons but carefully needed to be locked away in safer places

(‘maer die silverine lepelen leit men in vele sekerre steden’). Silverware, so the text continues, had

to be kept in a chest (‘kist’), shrine (‘scrine’) or box (‘fortsier’), safely hidden from possible thieves

and robbers.12 Often added to the intrinsic economic value of silver spoons were decorative

frivolities, which made them treasured possessions to their owners not only for their financial

value, but also for their aesthetic appeal. A sixteenth-century probate inventory of a Mechelen

household mentions a small rectangular box with a lock (‘een cleyn viercante cofferken met eenen

slote’) in which its most valuable silver spoons were stored, including several silver spoons with

an angel at the finial (‘op deynde een ingel’).13 This illustration nicely touches upon the ambiguities

connected to silver spoons, for their decoration suggests that they were designed for show, while

the preciousness of their base material at the same time urged their owners to keep them

hidden.14

However, to use the words of Pierre Bourdieu, even in highly commercialized societies,

people generally find it hard to treat their belongings ‘simply as objects of exchange’.15 Cultural

historians and anthropologists such as Igor Kopytoff likewise argued that ‘even things that

unambiguously carry an exchange value […] do absorb the other kind of worth, one that is non-

monetary and goes beyond exchange worth’ (our italics).16 Following this line of thought, and

highly influenced by the ‘material turn’, attention is nowadays shifting from quantitative

economic indicators towards the symbolical, social and cultural embeddedness of consumer

actions.17 Recent material culture studies increasingly pay attention to the cultural resonance of

particular objects, and to these objects’ personal, physical – and emotional – link to their

10 Muldrew, ‘Hard food for Midas’, 78-120. See also: Munro, ‘The technology and economics of coinage’, 20. 11 Kopytoff, ‘The cultural biography of things’, 68-70. 12 Gessler, Het Brugsche Livre des mestiers, 9. 13 Young, ‘The sexual politics of cutlery’, 102; CAM, Notary Thielens nr. 1701, f° 54v, 20/11/1574. 14 A similar argument has been made by Marcia Pointon in Pointon, ‘Jewellery in eighteenth-century England’, 123. 15 Allerston, ‘Worldly goods’, 28-29; Syson & Thornton, Objects of virtue. 16 Kopytoff, ‘The cultural biography of things’, 83. 17 Trenttman, ‘Materality in the future of history’, 283-307; Green, ‘Cultural history and the material(s) turn’, 61-82.


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owners.18 Since ‘things and humans are inseparably interwoven in mutually constitutive

relationships’, questions to be asked are for example how people thought and felt about silver

objects, how they appropriated them and how these silver objects themselves – because of their

base material, aesthetic or other qualities – had agency as well.19 A simple object like a silver spoon

therefore presents a unique case for exploring ideas about value in the period surveyed.20

To judge from the references to silver spoons in the early modern wills and probate

inventories central to this paper, it seems that they were indeed highly esteemed by their

possessors (and inheritors) and that they could convey multiple meanings – from personal

affection to the maintenance of social networks.21 It is therefore surprising that silver spoons

have thus far only been treated with perfunctory attention by socio-cultural historians, since this

specific kind of object – when situated in the early modern western-European (urban) household

– can highlight the interplay of layered meanings of material objects in a rapidly changing socio-

economic environment.22 In answer to this hiatus in historiography, this paper takes the middle

ground between economic and socio-anthropological approaches to early modern material

culture. We shall engage with the multiple meanings and functions of silver spoons in an early

modern urban context by combining a close reading of wills with an analysis of after-death

inventories for the case of sixteenth-century Mechelen. The idea central to our study is that

depending on the manner of acquisition, personal attachment or financial importance, silver

spoons were more than simple utensils to their sixteenth-century owners, since early-modern

conceptions of value were always embedded in contemporary cultural ideas on materiality and

firmly attached to social relations.23

SILVER SPOONS IN CONTEXT

Sources and methodology

Mechelen, a middle-sized town in the Low Countries, is an ideal case study for this research

because of its rich archives, which offer us well-preserved source material. A comparative analysis

of a small yet meaningful sample of wills and after-death inventories will enable us to estimate the

18 Most notably: Syson & Thornton, Objects of virtue; Hamling & Richardson, Everyday objects; Cohn, ‘Renaissance attachment to things’, 984-1004; Howell, Commerce before capitalism; Ajmar-Wollheim & Dennis, At home in renaissance Italy. 19 However, up until now, the majority of historical research inspired by the material turn tends to focus either on eighteenth century Britain or on Renaissance Italy; Trentmann, ‘Materiality in the future of history’, 307 (citation). 20 Clifford, ‘A commerce with things’, 147. 21 Ashley, ‘Material and symbolic gift-giving’, 142; Pointon, ‘Jewellery in eighteenth-century England’, 124. 22 Sweetinburgh, ‘Remembering the dead’, 18-19. 23 Hinton, ‘By sale, by gift’, 247. On the cultural perception of early-modern (but mostly 17th- & 18th-century) goods, see the stimulating article by John Crowley: Crowley, ‘The sensibility of comfort’, 749-782.


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‘value’ of silver spoons for sixteenth-century Mechelen households. To be sure, the

circumstances in which both types of official documents were generated, differed enormously. In

wills, gifts were carefully recorded and selected by their owner(s) who in this way consciously

determined the objects’ future destinations, whereas in after-death and confiscation inventories

goods were collected and itemised by an official who did not have any personal connection to the

goods appraised. The sources central to this paper, in other words, were pragmatically written,

and had to meet legal norms and formal requirements.24 The composers of probate inventories

logically focussed their descriptions of someone’s household goods on these items’ physical

characteristics and locations. Will-writers likewise commonly used simple physical descriptions

for the size, colour, composition or location of their movable properties: their first concern was

to make their goods easily recognizable to the executors of their wills. Despite of their formal

structure, it has been widely accepted that for ‘evidence of how people in early modern times

thought about goods, few records bases are as rich in number and as promising as probate

documents, and especially wills’.25 In recent historiography on early modern consumption

practices and material culture, both kinds of sources have often been analysed as entry points to

the relationship between owners and their possessions. Yet, surprisingly, both types of sources

have only rarely been studied in a comparative perspective.26 This scholarly neglect is even more

regrettable since it is exactly such a comparison, which allows for a deeper ‘reading’ of the

meanings and functions of diverse household objects.

Previous studies on inventories have convincingly demonstrated that the placement of

particular objects within the domestic interior can be revealing about the physical circumstances

of their use and their possible symbolic and social meanings.27 Indeed, households from the

sample examined inform us about the location of silver spoons. 10 out of 34 inventories (cfr.

infra) reveals how silver objects were indeed carefully shut away in small chests and cases or

prestigious furniture like a buffet or tresoor.28 When their location not known, they were listed

separately, under the heading jewellery and silverware (‘juweelen ande silver’). Both cases highlight

the rather exceptional status silver spoons were keeping in Mechelen households. The

representational strategies and legacies of testators, on the other hand, do allow historians to

analyse the testators’ relationships to their goods and embeddedness in social and family

24 Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, 10. 25 Orlin, ‘Empty vessels’, 299 (citation) - 301. 26 See, for instance: Heley, The material culture. 27 Hinton, ‘By sale, by gift’, 248. 28 BE, CAM, Fund Foncke, nr. 264, 26/02/1555; Chamber of Orphans, nr. 6, f° 154b, 10/04/1559; Notary Thielens, nr. 1700, f° 15, 09/01/1560; Notary Thielens, nr. 1700, f° 85r, 10/07/1561; Notary Thielens, nr. 1700, f° 216r, 07/09/1562; Notary Hildernis, nr. 995, f° 112v, 10/12/1572; Notary Thielens, nr. 1701, f° 54v, 10/11/1574; Notary Thielens, nr. 1701, f° 71r, 22/09/1575; Notary De Hondecoutre, nr. 998, f° 239, 07/10/1576; Notary De Munter, nr. 1298, f° 89r, 10/05/1577.


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networks.29 Many will-writers separately mentioned their most valuable goods in their wills, and

they could take surprising care to distribute these among selected friends and relatives. Wills,

therefore, can be revealing about the meaning attached to the bequeathed goods and (gendered)

attitudes towards property in general.30 It can be argued, though, that wills have advantages over

inventories, especially ‘when it comes to understanding aspirations and relationships between

people and property.’31 But when it comes to the actual possession (and ways of display) of silver

tableware, after-death inventories proved to be the most revealing. Hence the comparability of

both types of sources.

Thanks to previous research, we could rely on two already digitalised databases of sixteenth-

century Mechelen wills and after-death inventories. For our study, we made a selection of those

in which silver spoons and other silver objects were mentioned or endowed. Of a chief sample of

423 wills for the period 1532-1591, and a total of 119 after-death inventories32 for the period

1539-1600, 20 wills and 34 inventories met the requirements for our micro-study.33 Of course,

these small samples at first sight appear rather unrepresentative, but they – in our opinion – not

necessarily are: silver in this period remained a privilege of the most wealthy members of

society.34 It needs no argument that we, like most historians, are dealing with the upper and

middling layers of urban society.35 Keeping this inevitable social bias in mind, however, does not

render our research samples less meaningful or relevant for a study on early modern (urban)

attitudes towards silverware.

29 Orlin, ‘Empty vessels’, 301. 30

Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, 5-9; Hinton, ‘By sale, by gift’, 247 & 254. 31 Cohn, ‘Renaissance attachment to things’, 996-997. Moreover, wills written in sixteenth-century Mechelen are extra ‘rich’ for our study because of the city’s remarkably open inheritance laws: whereas in this period testators in Flanders could only bequeath one third of their property outside their circle of legal heirs, testators in Mechelen were free of such restrictions. de Longé, Costumen van de stad Mechelen (Brussels, 1879), 124-144. See also: Godding, ‘Dans quelle mesure’, 279-296; Godding, ‘La famille dans le droit urbain de l’Europe’, 25-36 32 Recently, Paul Behets has bundled all the inventories from the City Archives of Mechelen (Behets, Genealogisch repertorium), drawn from different funds (notarial archives, beguine convents, chamber of orphans and confiscation records (kept in the State Archives of Brussels)). For this research, the inventories of the beguine convents are excluded from the analysis, since they only list the items the convents themselves – not the beguines – owned. Similarly, the confiscation records are excluded as well, because the owners of these inventories – fugitives, prisoners or executed ‘heretics’ – most likely removed their silverware before appraisal could take place. 33 Databases by Kim Overlaet (wills) and Inneke Baatsen (inventories). 34 Cressy, ‘Kinship and kin interaction’, 59-65 35 Several studies on late medieval and early modern wills have pointed out that the number of beneficiaries endowed – along with the diversity of legacies given - in wills can be considered an indicator of the testators’ prosperity. See, for instance: Heley, The material culture.


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A market for spoons, spoons for the market?

From the late middle ages onwards, the European table culture saw an ever growing diversity of

cutlery, which went hand in hand with a rising diversity of the materials used, such as wood, iron,

treen ware and brass.36 Pewter tableware in particular became immensely widespread during the

late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was often described as ‘the silver of the bourgeoisie’.37

In after-death inventories pewter utensils show up frequently, especially when compared to

more uncommon references to the possession of silver ones. Pewter spoons, so it appears, were

always possessed in greater numbers, and in inventories they were most often listed among

kitchen utensils, whereas wooden spoons were very often not recorded at all - it is most probable

that they were valued too low by the appraisers of the estate. Only when focussing on the richest

households, silver utensils appear more frequently. Wealthy city dwellers indeed could afford to

use silver spoons as utensils, and according to Goldstein were stimulated to do so because silver

did not only prevent contact with harmful base metals (like copper), it also – and perhaps most

importantly – ‘precluded the tainting of food with the tastes of these metals’.38 However, these

objects’ very materiality at the same time linked them to a different category of household goods.

From the very onset, symbolic and sentimental values played upon silver spoons, which

surpassed their practical use.39 Moreover, there are reasons to suppose that even those

households who possessed silverware, still preferred less valuable (pewter) utensils for their daily

dinner. Christina Van Wachtendonck, widow to Jean-Baptiste de Taxis, kept six silver spoons

with gilded finials (‘zes lepelen met vergulde hooftkens) in a small flat wooden box in the lower

room (‘neercamere’). In her kitchen, however, a considerable amount of pewter flatware was

stored in a pewter cupboard along with four pewter spoons.40

Silverware, indeed, was an expensive luxury in this period. When in 1596 the estate of

pewterer Jan Snijers and his widow Clara Wuytiers was written down, his workshop assets

included a considerable amount of pewter objects made out of good quality English thin. The

value of these new small pieces (‘nieuw cleyn werck’) and flatware (‘gevrocht plat werck’) was

estimated at 2 Shillings for each ounce of pewter. The 6 silver spoons he left behind, on the

contrary, were appraised for approximately 69 Shillings each (or 3 Guilders 9 Shillings). Because the

median weight of all silver spoons recorded in the inventories was estimated at 1,5 ounce, this

means 1 ounce of silver equalled 46 Shillings, which was worth as much as 23 ounce of high

36 Goldstein, ‘Implements of eating’, 114; De Staelen, Spulletjes en hun betekenis, 355-357. 37

Pijzel-Domisse, ‘De inrichting van het huis van Oude Maria Dircksdochter’, 24-31. 38 Goldstein, ‘Implements of eating’, 117. 39 Goldberg, ‘The fashioning of bourgeois domesticity’, 134-135. 40 BE, CAM (City Archive of Mechelen), Notary Thielens, nr. 1700, f° 15, 09/01/1560. Goldberg, ‘The fashioning of bourgeois domesticity’, 134-135.


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quality crafted and wrought pewter.41 Additionally, apart from the value of the base material, Jan

and Clara’s silver spoons were fashioned according to a certain style. The price for this

workmanship or fashion (‘faitsoen’) was separately estimated at 33 Shillings for all six spoons.42

Nevertheless, silverware was sometimes just piled together and priced according to its absolute

weight. Only in rare occasions, experts made a more detailed valuation, but they mostly remained

silent about the craftsmanship. This makes it impossible to assess the exact monetary equivalent

of silver at a given moment in time. Moreover, a comparison to the inventory drawn of the estate

of Rombout De Monick (attorney of the Grand Council of Mechelen) and his wife Joanna Sols,

illustrates how the economic value of silver spoons could diverge. In the presence of Rombout’s

heirs, all silverware was carefully weighed and appraised by a goldsmith named Loyk Vanden

Bossche.43 Consequently, the six silver spoons of Rombout and Joanna – weighing 1,25 ounce

each – were estimated by Vanden Bossche for 1,6 Guilders per piece. Neither decoration, nor

other specific fashioning of the silver spoons is mentioned, but we do know Vandenbossche

calculated 33 Shillings for each ounce of silver. This was, of course, much less than was charged

for Jan and Clara’s silverware (cfr. supra, 46 Shillings per ounce).

The monetary value of silver in the sixteenth-century was also greatly influenced by the

enormous import of New World silver that was shipped through European ports. The influx of

silver into European markets in general rendered the metal more abundant than its buying power,

and the resulting inflationary effect contributed to the so-called ‘European price revolution’ of

the sixteenth century.44 In 1539, an Antwerp mason servant had to work 4,18 hours to earn a

wage equalizing 1 gram of silver. Around 1560, however, the same worker only had to work 2,19

hours if he wanted to purchase the same amount of silver. Finally, at the end of the century,

about 1,5 hours’ work would be enough.45 Even though silver’s intrinsic value on the market

became highly unstable46, the above-mentioned comparison between silver and pewter

underscores once more how at the end of the sixteenth-century the value of silver spoons still

towered high above the worth of pewter, copper and brass spoons. Rombout and Joanna’s

spoons were altogether prized at 10 Guilders 2 Shillings, which was roughly equivalent to a month’s

wage of a skilled labourer. Silverware, in other words, remained a luxury.47

41 One ounce of silver was equivalent to approximately 31 grams: Glanville, Silver, 7. 42 CAM, Notary Van De Venne, nr. 1718, f° 101r, 02/12/1596. 43 CAM, Notary Thielens, nr. 1700, f° 244r, 12/03/1562. 44 Flynn & Giraldez, ‘Born with a ‘silver spoon’’, 203. 45 Scholliers, ‘De levensstandaard’, 223. 46 Muldrew, ‘Hard food for Midas’, 90. 47 In the second half of the sixteenth-century, a period of inflation, the annual wages of skilled labourers in Mechelen varied between 96 guilders in wintertime, and 120 guilders in summertime. Van de Mosselaer, De levensstandaard.


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Mechelen households and their silverware

Although we deliberately focussed our analyses of after-death inventories and wills on those in

which silver items were mentioned, it remains hard to situate these households on the social grid

of sixteenth-century Mechelen. Fortunately, professional titles and the number of rooms

mentioned in after-death inventories can give an indication of social status, and confirm that we

are dealing with a privileged group of urban society. Christina van Wachtendonck, for example,

was widow to Jean-Bapist de Taxis, chief postmaster to Charles V and scion of the wealthy noble

family of de Taxis (later on Thurn & Taxis). Willem Van Orssaghen (1539) lived in a very

spacious house with eleven rooms, situated at the beginning of the Nieuwen Bruele (‘int beghinsel

vanden Nieuwen Bruele’).48 Even more roomy and decadent, was Daniël Stasse’s residence,

which included twenty rooms (and even two dining rooms).49 The latter’s silver collection kept

with the luxurious appeal of his dwelling, as he owned no less than 52 pieces of silverware, safely

hidden in a buffet in his dining room (‘salette ofte eedtcamere’). Part of his collection were twelve

silver spoons, complemented by one special silver spoon made from precious stone gilded with silver

(eenen lepele van costelicke steen in silver verghuelt beslaghen).50 Some of the well-off middling

ranks of Mechelen society were also represented among our sample. Together with his wife

Kathelijne, Hendrick Danis, gold- and silversmith, inhabited a house with seven rooms.51 Of the

same size was the abode of Gillis De Reyere and Marijken Verpoorten, situated on the

Veemarkt.52 We even came across the more modest household of Marie Lesseniers and tailor Jan

Veelmelaer. Their living quarters included only four rooms, and their silvers were made up of a

lidded cup and a silver necklace, making no reference to silver spoons. However ‘humble’ their

estate might appear, one needs to keep in mind that a considerable share of urban households

occupied one-room dwellings: houses with four or more rooms were generally owned by more

well-of city dwellers.53

By scrutinizing each household’s silverware collection more into detail, we were able to get a

more comprehensive picture of what kind of objects these households treasured. In most cases,

silver tableware and plate were registered together with silver (and in some cases also golden)

jewellery and small decorative objects like pins or insignia. By separating massive silver plates,

48 CAM, Fund Foncke, nr. 262, 09/05/1539. 49 CAM, Fund Foncke, nr. 264, 26/02/1555. 50 Database of after-death inventories (1539-1600) by Inneke Baatsen. 51 CAM, De Hondecoutere, nr. 997, f° 58, 27/08/1554. 52 CAM, De Hondecoutere, nr. 997, f° 308, 07/08/1558. 53 CAM, Chambre of orphans, nr. 6 f° 154b, 10/04/1559. For the period 1530-1550, the number of one-room accommodations in Antwerp has been estimated to account for no less than one quarter of all urban dwellings. See: V. Vandenbossche, 'Item eenen dronckemansstoel'. Een historisch onderzoek naar de materiële cultuur: Boedelinventarisonderzoek in de stad Antwerpen (1530-1550), (Leuven: 2002) p. 59. Although comparison with Antwerp is rather unrepresentative ( the enormous growth of this port city caused rents to rocket during the sixteenth-century), it gives a nice indication of the importance of one-room lodgings in sixteenth-century cities.


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cups and cutlery from the smaller silver accessories like rings, necklaces and gilded belts, we tried

to get a more nuanced picture. If households were keeping silver objects, were they only having

some small pieces of jewellery or do we come across more substantial and heavy pieces of silver?

Which share of households was having silver spoons as part of their collection and were these

spoons acquired in high numbers?

Table 1 : Composition of silverware collections in after-death inventories with silverware (N=34).

Object type

Massive silver plate &

table silver

N Inventories % Inventories

UNCLEAR

(silverware not specified)

4 12

NONE 3 9

1-6 PIECE(S) 16 47

7-12 PIECES 5 15

> 12 PIECES 6 18

TOTAL 34 100

Small silverware

& jewellery


UNCLEAR 4 12

NONE 6 18

1-6 PIECES 17 50

7-12 PIECES 7 21

> 12 PIECES 0 0

TOTAL 34 100

Source: Database Mechelen after-death inventories (1539-1600) by Inneke Baatsen.

Based on Table 1, we can surmise that most households possessed rather modest collections (1

to 6 pieces) of both types of silver objects. But when it comes to the massive (more expensive)

silver objects, six households were clearly outstripping the others as their ample silverware

collection of cups, spoons and plates is considered. Margriete Huens, for example, owned no less

than 34 pieces, including 6 pitchers, 2 small trinkets, 3 cups, 1 beer trinket and 2 silver salt cellars.

Her smaller silverware included 6 pieces of fine gilded jewellery.54 Those six inventories all

belonged to households living in huge dwellings, apart from Margriete Huens, who’s inventory

does not include room indications. But we do know Margriete’s silverware collection was

54 BE, CAM, Notary Thielens, nr. 1701, f° 1r, 12/03/1573.


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estimated for a dazzling 221 Guilders 16 Shillings. Moreover, as her estate also included 1108

Guilders 6 Shillings of cash money, there is no doubting Margriete belonged to Mechelen’s most

well-off citizens.55 Clearly, as was to be expected, the investment in vast collections of more

heavy, opulent silver was a privilege to a selected group only.

But we need to stress that – based on our analysis of their inventories – the majority of

Mechelen households who possessed silverware owned at least 1 to 6 pieces of massive silver,

mostly comprising silver spoons complemented with one or two cups or goblets. Indeed, as can

Table 2 : Presence of silver spoons in after-death inventories with silverware (N=34).


UNCLEAR

(silverware not specified)

4 12

NO SPOONS 6 18

1 SPOON 5 15

2-6 SPOONS 11 32

> 6 SPOONS 8 24

TOTAL 34 100

Source: Database Mechelen after-death inventories (1539-1600) by Inneke Baatsen.

be gleaned from Table 2, silver spoons were part of 71 per cent of the silver collections surveyed.

The majority of households (56 per cent) was having more than one spoon, and they mostly

came in sets of three, six, nine or twelve pieces. These spoons were clearly acquired or inherited

as collections themselves, as they presumably came all with matching decoration and were of the

same weight and fashion. Likewise, it comes as no surprise that the most wealthy households

possessed the largest collection of spoons. Margriete alone was counting 15 silver spoons among

her silver set (if we exclude the wooden spoon embellished with a silver handle and gilded Saint

George at the finial).56 Of another kind, however, were those spoons mentioned separately from

the other spoon collections. Adriaen Lantvin’s estate notes six silver spoons with gilded

embossing (‘sesse silveren lepels met vergulde cnoppekens’) but finishes – after listing some

jewellery – with one other spoon of different fashion (‘van een ander faitsoen’).57 Apart from the

five inventories having no spoons but one, we come across six other references to individual

spoons in those households having next to this ‘unique piece’ also matching sets. The inventory

of the deceased Clara Wuytiers carefully states that of her six silver spoons, five were to be given

55 BE, CAM, Notary Thielens, nr. 1701, f° 1r, 12/03/1573. 56 BE, CAM, Notary Thielens, nr. 1701, f° 1r, 12/03/1573. 57 BE, CAM, Notary Van De Venne, nr. 1721, f° 44v, 16/04/1600.


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to her children.58 The spoons which were mentioned individually thus most likely were part of a

legacy or gift, and therefore link those precious objects to a rather different kind of appreciation

by their owners.

As mentioned above, only twenty out of 423 testators who wrote a will in the period 1532-

1591 gave one or more silver objects to friends and relatives as testamentary gifts. Among these

testators were ten single and widowed women (of which seven were beguine) and ten men, of

which seven were married and three others were high-ranking clergymen. Judging by the

numbers of beneficiaries mentioned and accounting for endowed children and nieces and

nephews who had reached majority, these testators all wrote their wills at a later stage of their

lives. Moreover, the great diversity of objects and monetary legacies gifted suggests that the will-

writers central to this study likewise belonged to the upper layers of society. Intriguingly,

however, when we take a closer look to the impact of wealth on the endowment of silver items, it

appears that the most affluent testators rarely bequeathed silver objects explicitly in their wills. A

digitalized tax list of the year 1544 serves as a point of reference to identify the social position of

the testators central to this study. In sum, 21% of the authors of the chief sample of 423 wills

could be found in this tax list.59 Based on the amount of money they paid in the year 1544, these

will-writers have been divided into quartiles.60 Of the richest testators (Q4), single woman Barbele

Verbeeck was the only one who endowed one of her beneficiaries with a silver spoon in her will

of 1546.61 A few years later (1553), Ghijsbrecht Ghueskens and his wife Kathelijne De Vos (Q3)

left their brothers and sisters several silver objects.62 None of the testators in category Q2

mentioned silver items in their wills, while Kathelijne Van Duffel, a single woman, was the only

will-writer in category Q1 who appeared to possess silverware.63 An explanation for this silence in

particular can be found in the language of will-writing: vague descriptions of significant gifts

occurred frequently. Testators in sixteenth-century Mechelen relied on the honesty of the

executioners of their wills, who they often entrusted with the task of dividing their inheritance

into several equally valuable shares. Married couples further generally endowed each other with

(the usufruct of) all properties belonging to their household, whereas most testators also chose

58 BE, CAM, Notary Van De Venne, nr. 1718, f° 101r, 02/12/1596. 59 This small percentage might surprise, but several studies on early modern wills have pointed out that will-making was never necessarily confined to those with substantial property. The wealth of those writing wills was not always higher than of those who died intestate. See, for instance: Vann, ‘Wills and the family’, 348-356. 60 The tax people had to pay was based on the value of the houses they owned or rented. 12,5% of the testators found in the tax list belonged to the first and poorest quartile, another 12,5 can be assigned to the second. 41% testators belonged to the third quartile, whereas 34% can be found in the fourth and richest category of social stratification. Source: database Maarten F. Van Dijck. 61 BE, CAM, S.I. nr. 10, folio 28r-29r. 62 BE, CAM, S.I. nr. 11, folio 72rv. 63 BE, CAM, S.I. nr. 10, folio 68rv.


13

someone who would inherit the remainder of all of their movable and immovable goods. It is

beyond doubt that these important parts of the inheritance, and especially testators’ movable

possessions, could include silverware. A similar nuance goes for after-death inventories of

households who supposedly were lacking silverware but in reality could have possessed silver

plate and jewellery. These silver objects could have been bequeathed to relatives and friends,

included in a wedding contract, or simply kept hidden from the appraiser. Therefore it must be

taken into account that after-death inventories and wills portray only one moment in the life of

objects, and that it is impossible to estimate whether they were bought or exchanged by the

decedents themselves, or circulating in their family.64

THE DESTINY OF SILVER SPOONS

Objects of exchange

Given the economic importance of movable property, it does not come as a surprise that even in

wills silver spoons and other silver objects sometimes functioned as just means of payment. For

his work as the executor of the will she wrote in 1545, single woman Barbele Verbeeck gave

priest Joseph van Opberghen one silver spoon.65 Marie Hooghen, living in the beguinage of St

Catherine, likewise left both executioners of her will a silver spoon each, as compensation for

their efforts and work (‘moeyte ende arbeyt’).66 Other silver objects could serve this function as well:

in 1588 Philip Danzyn and his wife Barbele van Nieuwenhuyze left his brother Adolf a silver

plate worth 50 Guilders as payment for carrying out their last wishes.67 Explicit references to the

value of such silver objects occur sporadically, though underline their function as possible objects

of exchange. In the will canon Egidius Meremans wrote in the year 1578, he left his sister

Elisabeth a silver cup, which apparently was worth twenty-five guilders. The monetary value of

this gift was considerable, amounting to more than 80 day’s wage of a skilled carpenter or

mason.68 Silver spoons apparently were less valuable: the spoons Sebastiaan Van den Borre, a

priest of the St Rombold’s church, left to his nieces in his will of 1568 were worth three guilders

each.69 Five out of twenty testators based their descriptions of certain silver household items

(among which six spoons) primarily on their weight or monetary value. Sometimes explicit

64 Hinton, ‘By sale, by gift’, 254. 65 BE, CAM, S.I., nr. 10, folio 28r-29r. 66 BE, CAM, OCMW Archives (Archives of the public welfare institutions of Mechelen), nr. 9445. 67 BE, CAM, S.I., nr. 17, folio 63r-64r. 68 BE, AAM (Archbishopric Archives of Mechelen), Archive of the collegiate church of St Rombold, Personalia, nr. 412. In the second half of the sixteenth-century, a period of inflation, the annual wages of skilled labourers in Mechelen varied between 96 guilders in wintertime, and 120 guilders in summertime. Van de Mosselaer, De levensstandaard. 69 BE, AAM, Archive of the collegiate church of St Rombold, Personalia, nr. 412.


14

references were made to the commissions silver objects were intended to be exchanged for.

Beguine Johanne De Bruyne endowed the Grauwzusters convent of Mechelen with almost all of

her silver spoons to use them as a payment for the restoration of the convent’s altar.70

Of course, silver utensils also served a more practical use. Identifying the everyday functions

of silver objects like saltshakers, rosaries and censers needs no imagination. Yet sometimes

testators made explicit references to the way in which and by whom the silver objects they

endowed were expected to be used, or used in the past. Beguine Johanne De Bruyne apparently

owned a rich and varied collection of cutlery. Whereas her maid received a number of pewter

dishes and bowls, sauce bowls, pots and pans intended for her daily use (‘om daghelijcx te

gebruycken’), Johanne gave her nieces Nelleke and Lysken six silver goblets, two little silver cups

and several silver spoons to use for the rest of their lives (‘om haeren leefdach te gebruycken’).71 The

great number of beneficiaries and the value of the legacies mentioned in her will, indicates that

Johanne De Bruyne was very prosperous, and that she inhabited a big house with numerous well-

furnished rooms. One could even argue that by her will, Johanne De Bruyne was trumpeting

about her wealth and status, which enabled her a luxurious life and allowed her to make a clear

social distinction between her nieces and the maid serving her household. Moreover, her will

confirms a strong link between one’s social status and table culture: Johanne was clearly used to

dine with her nieces, using silver utensils, while her maid probably dined on her own, using

pewter pots and pans.72 The wills central to this study, in short, confirm that the use of silver

cutlery and plate was a privilege of the most affluent only. In his will of 1532, the wealthy

Johannes Robbijns, who was dean and canon of the collegiate church of St Rombold in

Mechelen, left his sister-in-law a silver handled cup used for drinking (‘om vuyt te drinckene’). He

further endowed his maid Johanne van Valckenberghe with a small silver craenken used for drinking

(‘daermen duer drinke’) out of gratitude for her service. Johannes also gave his brother Wouter

the foldable silver spoon which was locked away in a small case, and with which he was used to eat

(‘daer mij mede plach te eetene’). He further endowed Wouter with a precious enamelled silver

mug, which Johannes identified as a testamentary gift of the bishop of Atrecht. Karel Michiels,

one of his other beneficiaries, received an amount of silver with which he could have made a

silver mug to remember the testator (‘ter gedinckenisse van hem testateur’).73

70 BE, CAM, OCMW Archives, nr. 9444. 71 BE, CAM, OCMW Archives, nr. 9444. 72 Martha Howell came to comparable conclusions in her analysis of medieval wills written in Douai. Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, 36. 73 BE, AAM, Archive of the collegiate church of St Rombold, Personalia, nr. 412.


15

Precious metal, cherished objects

These examples confirm that silver objects, which could be used and exchanged as commodities,

mostly measured far more than their economic value, since they also ‘carried and marked social

and cultural value’.74 The silver spoons and other objects endowed in sixteenth-century Mechelen

wills, in short, were more than the cash they could buy. The same goes for some silver objects in

the inventories surveyed. Daniël Stasse owned a high drinking cup which carried his heraldic

imprint, making the object into an item to be cherished, for it communicated power and

tradition.75 Moreover, legacies and gifts by testament always momentarily yet inevitably escaped

commerce.76 The emphasis in this specific form of gift-giving always was on long-term bonding

rather than on commodity exchange. Several international studies on wills have convincingly

demonstrated that the concept of memoria, or the commemoration of deceased members of the

community, was central to late medieval and early modern gift-giving.77 Even when testators in

Mechelen stressed the real value and practical functions of their gifts of silverware, they could

also explicitly refer to these objects’ commemorative meanings. When Willem de Normand and

his wife Marie Laureyn wrote their will in 1576, they apparently were quite concerned about

being remembered by their kin and community. Both left Willem’s nephew a silver plate weighing

about a quarter kilo (‘wegende een marck’) to remember him, while Willem van Gryspere, a friend

of the couple, was also endowed with a silver plate worth twenty guilders as a remembrance (‘eender

gedynckenisse’).78 Beneficiaries of such gifts were expected to be grateful to their benefactors and

showed their gratitude, for instance, by praying for their souls, while the testators themselves saw

(or hoped to see) their identities and social status confirmed.79

References to the commemorative meaning of silver objects could also take the more subtle

and implicit form of references to previous ownership. Kathelijne van Brecht, for instance,

endowed her nephew Johan with a silver ring which once belonged to his sister.80 Still, more

telling about the more symbolic meanings of silver objects are the relationships testators wanted

to create, maintain, confirm or even restore by their gifts to deliberately chosen beneficiaries

among their circles of friends and relatives. Testamentary gifts, in other words, functioned as

74 Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, 39 (citation) & 44. 75 CAM, Fund Foncke, nr. 264, 26/02/1555. 76 Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, 39. 77

Bijsterveld, ‘The medieval gift’, 133. 78 BE, CAM, S.I., nr. 16, folio 21v - 22v. 79 Bijsterveld, ‘The medieval gift’, 124-125. See for instance: Lauwers, La mémoire des ancêtres: Cohn, Death and property. 80 BE, CAM, OCMW Archives, nr. 9445.


16

means of social communication.81 By such gifts, ‘both the memory and the material influence of

the deceased would be kept alive for other members of his or her familial and social networks.’82

In the wake of the pioneering work of Marcel Mauss (1924), more recent anthropological

and sociological studies considered gift-giving as a kind of contract, and the gift itself as a social

fact: by giving, receiving and rejecting gifts strategically, people symbolically communicate their

social and family identities.83 Or as Jack Hinton argued, objects in a gift exchange constantly

‘hovered between gift and payment status’.84 Although their economic importance is never

discarded, Jeremy Goldberg likewise argues that in wills and testaments silvers spoons are

bestowed with other meanings than their monetary values alone.85 Goldberg particularly stresses

the fact that silver spoons possessed something of the quality of an heirloom, passing through

different generations of a family.86 Testamentary gifts, in other words, ‘did not create abstract

social relations as a market exchange is thought to do - they made social relationships concrete’.

Unlike market transactions, these gifts in the first place acknowledged and communicated

friendship and family relations.87 When the mentioned Johannes Robbijns identified a silver mug

as a gift he himself had once received from the bishop of Atrecht, he emphasized his own high

social (and in this case also religious) status as the bishop’s friend (or acquaintance at least).88

Indeed, one could argue that testamentary legacies essentially implied social or family

commitments.89 The corresponding responsibilities people had, highly depended on their position

in these networks. And this position, in turn, was inextricably linked to their life cycle stages,

wealth and gender.

In current historiography age has become widely interpreted as a crucial dimension of both

individual and social dimensions, with an impact on people’s life tracks that can be considered

comparably significant to the influence of social status, wealth and gender.90 Studies on early

modern wills have confirmed the impact of age on peoples’ choices of beneficiaries. The earlier

in their life cycle testators wrote their wills, the more often they tended to choose their

beneficiaries among their closest relatives. When they were older, concern generally broadened to

others beyond their circle of direct heirs.91 In this regard, it is imperative to note that all testators

81 Bijsterveld, ‘The medieval gift’, 124-125. 82 Ashley, ‘Material and symbolic gift-giving’, 146. 83 Sherry, ‘Gift giving in anthropological perspective’, 158-159; Howell, Commerce before capitalism, 181. 84 Hinton, ‘By sale, by gift’, 247. 85 Ashley, ‘Material and symbolic gift-giving’, 140-141; Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, 44. 86 Goldberg, ‘The fashioning of bourgeois domesticity’, 134. 87 Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, 44. 88 BE, AAM, Archive of the collegiate church of St Rombold, Personalia, nr. 412. 89 Bijsterveld, ‘The medieval gift’, 124-125. See for instance: Sherry, ‘Gift giving in anthropological perspective’. 90 Coontz, ‘Historical perspectives on family studies’, 283; Laslett, ‘Necessary knowledge’, 4-5; Botelho & Thane, ‘Introduction’. 91 Heley, The material culture, 33-34; Cressy, ‘Kinship and kin interaction’, 58-61.


17

endowing silverware in sixteenth-century Mechelen had written their wills in a later moment of

their lives. Their legacies indicate that most of them were uncles and aunts, or even grandparents.

They further - without exception - belonged to the upper layers of society, which enabled them

to endow many beneficiaries with various valuable gifts.

Significantly, although our sample remains small, a comparable bequest pattern emerges in

the wills of both women and men (whether religious or secular). When endowed in wills, silver

spoons, so it appears, mostly went to the testators’ godchildren92, nieces and nephews (five

instances). Beguine Maximiliane de Begge left her nieces three silver spoons with Christian finials

each in her will of 154693, while clergyman Egidius Meremans gave to all of the five children of

his sister Elizabeth a single silver spoon in his will of 1578.94 In the will he wrote in the year 1568,

priest Sebastiaan Van den Borre endowed each of his godchildren with a silver spoon worth three

guilders.95 Similarly, single women Kathelijne Van Duffel left each of her godchildren (who were

also all related to her by blood) a silver spoon.96 In their wills, beguines Kathelijne van Brecht

(undated) and Johanne De Bruyne (1548) even explicitly reserved their most valuable (‘den

besten’) silver spoons for their nieces, nephews and godchildren. For example, Lynken van

Brecht, godchild to Kathelijne, was given a precious silver spoon with a gold-plated finial (‘een

vergulden cnopken’).97 By giving silver spoons to young(er) children, one could argue that these

objects left the market for a certain period: only when the testators’ nieces and nephews had

reached majority, they were entitled to use their silver spoons as objects of exchange.

Always on the market?

And so our argument goes that in sixteenth-century Mechelen silver spoons primarily functioned

as keepsakes, which firmly linked children to their kin. Here, rather than circulating as

commodities on the market, silver spoons circulated between different generations of a family.

Moreover, our analysis of after-death inventories, as well as comparable observations in other

studies on early modern material culture and society, confirm this hypothesis. In inventories,

silver spoons are sometimes explicitly identified as possession of the household’s offspring.

Among the silver collection of widow Margriete Huens, for instance, we find nine silver spoons

92 See on the importance of godparenthood (the so-called spiritual kinship) in the early modern period, for instance: Bossy, ‘Blood and baptism’; Alfani, Fathers and godfathers. 93 BE, CAM, S.I. nr. 10, folio 50r - 51v. 94 BE, AAM, Archive of the collegiate church of St Rombold, Personalia, nr. 412. 95 BE, AAM, Archive of the collegiate church of St Rombold, Personalia, nr. 412. 96 BE, CAM, S.I. nr. 10, folio 68rv. 97 BE, CAM, OCMW Archives, nr. 9445 & nr. 9444.


18

belonging to the children (‘negen silveren lepel toebehoirende de kinderen).98 When the estate of his

deceased wife Clara was made, Jan Snijers likewise took care to have five of their six silver spoons

separately listed, as they were to be distributed amongst their children.99 In both examples, the

silver spoons were ‘projected into a narrative for the future – by the sentiments of ownership’.100

In sixteenth-century Oudenaarde, silver spoons also seemed to have symbolized a kind of ritually

growing-up as children sometimes received such objects when they ‘emancipated’ from the

guidance of their parents. Jacop Staelins, for example, gave each of his six children a silver spoon

designed by his own hand and marked with his devise (‘ende gheeft elc vanden voornoemde zyne

kinderen eenen zelveren lepel wezende tzynen hand gheteeckent met zynen meercke’.101 When

given to children, silver spoons simultaneously functioned as tokens of remembrance and as

valuable assets for the future.102

In this light it becomes clear that in sixteenth-century Mechelen silver spoons, be it as

testamentary gifts, emancipatory symbols or treasured household goods, only rarely functioned as

mere ‘commodities’: they were dense with social and symbolical meanings. Ironically, however,

it was exactly their high-esteemed value on the market which contributed to silverware’s long-

lasting appreciation. On the one hand, silver retained its powerful, symbolical (even mythical)

attraction as an expensive luxury good, which was usually associated with the most affluent and

even noble members of society.103 The use of silver utensils remained a privilege as well: when the

famous artist Albrecht Dürer lauded the Antwerp guild of Saint-Luke for serving their meals on

splendid silver dishes when he joined their dinner in the 1520’s, he was by no means ironic.104 In

a period when the new less-durable ‘commodities’ filled the nooks and crannies of Mechelen

houses, silver held firm as a luxury good. Yet Marcia Pointon is right when she argues that ‘at no

stage does the economic value preclude the ritual or sentimental worth of the object. Each

complements the other.’105 Because of their durability, silver spoons were utterly able to pass

98 BE, CAM, Notary Thielens, nr. 1701, f° 1r, 12/03/1573. 99 BE, CAM, Notary Van De Venne, nr. 1718, f° 101r, 02/12/1596. 100 Pointon, ‘Jewellery in eighteenth-century England’, 124. 101 We would like to thank Pieter Jan Lachaert for recommending this source, recently bundled by André Lafort: Lafort, Emancipaties gepasseerd voor de oppervoogden van de stad Oudenaarde (1569-1796) en voor de gezworenen van Pamele (1570-1592), Akten te Oudenaarde, p. 008, Reg. 33, f°10 r. 102 In early modern Augsburg children entering the orphanage were often accompanied by small silver objects, such as spoons, which bore witness of their ancestry and of their relationships in the larger community. See: Safley, Charity and economy, 121. See also the argument by Sarah Coffin, that ‘in many countries, the spoon was associated with birth and baby’s food, becoming associated, in Christianity, with christenings and representations of the Virgin and apostles, as a way to connect the act of eating to spirituality’. Coffin, ‘Historical overview’, 38-39. 103 Clifford, ‘A commerce with things’, 148. 104 DÜRER, ALBERT, Le journal de voyage d‟Albert Dürer dans les anciens Pays-Bas, 1520-1521, J.A. GORIS e.a. (transl.) (Brussels 1970). 105 Pointon, ‘Jewellery in eighteenth-century England’, 132-133.


19

from generation to generation. Their appreciation as tokens of remembrance, personal affection

and kinship was thus not coincidentally connected to the intrinsic qualities of their base matter.

On the other hand, changes in consumer preferences and ‘taste’ caused priorities to shift

when it came to silver objects’ intrinsic value, craftsmanship and personal association.106 Whereas

most sixteenth-century inventories just appraised silverware according to its weight (thus

allegedly paying only attention to its intrinsic value), from the late 1590’s onwards we find

references to a separate cost for ‘fashion’.107 As the definition of ‘luxury’ came to pay less

attention to the intrinsic worth of goods, people increasingly valued their goods’ aesthetic appeal

and fashionability as prime markers.108 Luxury, in other words, gradually was no longer necessarily

bound to expensive materials. But silversmiths dealt with this cultural changes in a rather flexible

way, as the possibilities for casting silver into new, fashionable pieces were (almost) endless.109 To

sum up, both subjective and economic appreciation made silver spoons into a ‘timeless’ luxury.

They were cherished as objects connecting the individual to the past (as a token of remembrance

and an articulation of silverware’s traditional symbolic meanings of wealth and power), while at

the same time they tied their owners to the future since they could be kept as a legacy for future

descendants and were instantly convertible into cash when needed.

CONCLUSIONS

Up until now, the material culture of sixteenth-century households in the Low Countries has

largely remained unexplored. As ‘material culture’ encompasses so many and varied aspects of

both private and (semi-)public daily life, we chose to focus on one specific object of the

sixteenth-century material world. The analysis of silver spoons in last wills and after-death

inventories has not only demonstrated how the value of a small silver object was articulated

through the precious qualities of its base material, it has also revealed how spoons were evaluated

by their owners as objects with an important monetary, personal, emotional and social value. As

such, our study has confirmed that a strict economic approach to material culture risks to

106 Clifford, ‘A commerce with things’, 147. 107 Studies on Renaissance Italy, however, do locate this emphasis on craftsmanship already a century earlier: Liefkes, ‘Tableware’, 255. 108 De Munck, ‘Skills, Trust, and Changing Consumer Preferences’, 232; De Vries, ‘Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age in Theory and Practice’. 109 A nice illustration of how silversmiths struggled with but in the end successfully overcame competition from new products was the invention of the silver teapot. The high conductivity rendered silver less usable for the design of these new hot drink recipients. But both the inventiveness of the silversmiths and the social prestige of silver resulted in reconfigured silver teapots at the end of the 17th century. See: Styles, ‘Product innovation in early modern London’, 145-146.


20

trivialize ‘the many social and moral layers of rationality at work when people make choices’.110

When beguine Kathelijne van Brecht choose to bequeath her godchild with a silver spoon, she

most likely did not consider the financial value of the spoons as the primary (let it out only)

reason for offering Lynken this small object. To both testator and beneficiary, the silver spoon

was a token of remembrance, not only laden with emotional value but also perceived as the

articulation of a deeply rooted cultural habit, for it has been suggested in our paper that silver

spoons often functioned as symbolical gifts to children.

The ‘use’ and value of silver spoons, in other words, was not only based on their materiality,

but simultaneously ‘tightly connected with practices, norms, and symbolic meaning’.111 Silver

spoons, to conclude, derived their symbolic meaning from their high value at the market, as well as

from their connection to a high (material) culture associated with the nobility and urban elites.112

However, this does not render silver spoons into passive objects. Laden with meanings, they

functioned as important signifiers of cultural, social and economic values. As such, they could

communicate more abstract values when displayed, such as ‘wealth’, ‘hospitality’, ‘tradition’ and

even ‘creditworthiness’.113 Sixteenth-century city dwellers in Mechelen were well aware of the

complex interplay of these meanings. Like other silver objects – acquired, possessed, given and

inherited – in this period, silver spoons did not only function as a savings account, they always

also constituted a means by which people could link themselves to their family or community,

and as such not only expressed the personal, but also the family and social identities of their

owners.

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