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 SMP Silver Salon Forums
 Silver Stories
 If a man leaves his house at 7am...
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| Author | Topic: If a man leaves his house at 7am... |
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June Martin Forum Master Posts: 1326 |
posted 03-01-2003 10:25 PM
  
I was just catching up on the posts and as I read the descriptions provided by the various posters, I found myself reminded of grade school when I was asked to find the solution for some mathematical word problem. If a man leaves his house at 7am, picks up a paper and walks 5 miles and then catches a bus running 25 miles per hour and arrives at his friend's house at noon which is 100 miles away, how fast was he walking? I have a spoon with what looks like a man's profile or could be a horse followed by a dot-B-dot and scratched on the back is 1/364. My mother told me it belonged to my great great grandmother who lived to the age of 102. Who made it and when? Maybe it's me, but there is something really wacky and wonderful about this crazy world of antiques. IP: Logged |
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Paul Lemieux Posts: 1792 |
posted 03-02-2003 02:44 PM
June, that sounds like a really neat spoon! Can you post pictures of it? Your post reminds of some of the unusually inscribed pieces of silver I've seen. One was a spoon engraved with the name of some kind of convalescent home, the word "Grandma" and a date. Another was a pie knife engraved with an excerpt from somebody's last will and testament(!). Unfortunately these two pieces were rather expensive so I didn't pick them up, though whenever I think of them I have feelings of non-buyer's remorse. Another is a coin silver medallion napkin ring engraved "Or Baoon 1868" with a little etched picture of the continent of Africa. Luckily this one was fairly reasonable so I purchased it, I'll try to get pictures posted today or tomorrow. IP: Logged |
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June Martin Forum Master Posts: 1326 |
posted 03-02-2003 03:17 PM
Ok, I confess, I made up the spoon description. I was just trying to draw a corollary between trying to interpret the old math word problems and trying to interpret the written descriptions of silver objects. Scott didn't get where I was going so maybe I was being a bit obtuse. Still, no one has answered the math problem  IP: Logged |
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wev Moderator Posts: 4121 |
posted 03-02-2003 03:34 PM
5 mph IP: Logged |
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Bob and Carol Carnighan Posts: 63 |
posted 03-02-2003 03:47 PM
The problem is unclear: Is the friend's house 100 miles from his house or where he caught the bus? The approach is the same. Assuming the friend's house is 100 miles from where he caught the bus and the bus runs at 25 miles per hour, the bus covered the distance in 4 hours. If he left his house at 7 am and arrived at his friend's house at noon, he travelled for 5 hours. Subtracting 4 hours on the bus, he walked 5 miles in one hour at a rate of 5 miles per hour. IP: Logged |
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Paul Lemieux Posts: 1792 |
posted 03-02-2003 05:13 PM
Hi June. I knew it sounded too good to be true  But for what it's worth, here's that medallion napkin ring and another coin silver napkin ring I forgot I had, also with a neat inscription. ---
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akgdc Posts: 289 |
posted 03-02-2003 06:29 PM
I love mysterious inscriptions ..... The initials "U.S.A." after a name definitely signify US Army. Jones and Mitchell are obviously names too common to pin down, but intriguingly, a quick internet search reveals that the First Maryland Regiment (Union) in the Civil War had a Surgeon Mitchell. That would clearly also be the right period for your napkin ring. "Or. Baoon" looks like it should be a name. Are you sure that Africa-shaped blotch is an engraving? It looks in the photo more like a damaged patch on the silver. IP: Logged |
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FredZ Posts: 1070 |
posted 03-02-2003 07:35 PM
Paul, The blemish in the napkin ring does look like a repair in the shape of Africa. The Or appears to have a period after it so that it looks more to be an abbreviated first name such as Orland. I saw Or. Bacon. 1868. Seems as if the period was use after each work and even after the date. It is a nice medalion collectible. IP: Logged |
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wev Moderator Posts: 4121 |
posted 03-02-2003 09:27 PM
There's nothing like an obscure inscription on a lovely old piece to drive one crazy. I recently acquired a nice rat-tail teaspoon with a clear mark of Jeffery Lang (1706-1758) and a shaded roman monogram of I star B. So who is IB? As it happens, one of Lang's major patrons was Thomas Barton and his wife Mary Willoughby. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a salver, a mote spoon, and two place spoons, all traceable to the couple or their children. Except for size, the spoons are twins for mine and, with the other pieces, are amongst the silver that descended to Benjamin Pitman, whose inventory of the estate lists "10 Large spoons, 29 small do; 37 large spoons of the table and 20 teaspoons." The monogram on my spoon is tantalizingly close in style to those on the Barton pieces I have seen and the couple had a son named John, who died unmarried in his 30s and left no heirs. One could presume he used the family maker and his worldly goods returned to Thomas and Mary, who outlived him. It all works out so nicely, but how to prove the contention? There is no provenance past the job-lot box it came in. I've found no will recorded for John. I've found nothing else recorded by Lang with the IB monogram. Those of a professional nature have given no more than a polite smile and a "possibly." All of which bothers me not -- it is beautiful thing in itself -- but it is aggravating. IP: Logged |
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akgdc Posts: 289 |
posted 03-02-2003 10:44 PM
Every so often, though, a mystery inscription can be solved. I think I've posted here before about a tankard I've owned for a while (hallmarked London, 1722) that has this cryptic message engraved: "The Gift of ye Owners of ye Mary & Mariane Well, just last month I tracked down a letter in the Public Record Office in London, written by the royal governor of North Carolina to the Lords of the Admiralty in 1741, referring to the lease of a ship called the "Mary & Mariane" for Royal Navy service in the colony in 1740. I'm still trying to work out exactly who gave the tankard to whom, but at least I've got part of the story -- and confirmed that this is a very early piece of Southern-related presentation silver. You never know, wev -- maybe IB will eventually unmask himself. IP: Logged |
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wev Moderator Posts: 4121 |
posted 03-02-2003 11:08 PM
What a prize. You might try Lloyds of London -- they probably insured the boat (?) and if so would have a record of the owners. Any chance of pictures? IP: Logged |
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Paul Lemieux Posts: 1792 |
posted 03-03-2003 01:48 AM
It's no 1720s naval presentation piece, but one of my favorite pieces in our family silver is a large 1753 London tankard with a big inscription of "Ma" on the front.  IP: Logged |
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akgdc Posts: 289 |
posted 03-03-2003 02:48 PM
Paul, that's great ... do you know who "Ma" was? (Somehow, I'm reminded of Ma and Pa Kettle ... but this would be Ma Tankard.) Wev, I'll try to get some pics to post ... unfortunately, the digital pics I have of my tankard are packed away on an old computer, but I can try to get some new ones. IP: Logged |
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Marc Posts: 414 |
posted 03-12-2003 01:58 AM
Hi there.. Concerning inscriptions, I have a mid 19th century coin silver master salt spoon inscribed in flowing script "Baldy". IP: Logged |
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