The collection of Welsh lovespoons in the National Museum of Wales, several of which are illustrated in Fig. [85], is quite unique. Dr. Hoyle, the Director of the Museum, in his admirable description of the case in which these pretty little objects are shown, explains that they are arranged to show the evolution of the lovespoon from the normal spoon. Such lovespoons might, a few years ago, have been seen in many Welsh homes, where they hung as things of ornament and sentiment, for it is said they were given in "spooning" days to the girl of his choice by the lover. The handle is of course the appropriate field of decoration, the double bowl being symbolic of "We two are one." The dated spoons were mostly made in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Glass Curios.
Some of the most pleasing love tokens are those made at Nailsea in Somerset, and in Sunderland. The commoner kinds, chiefly made at the latter place, were known as sailors' love tokens. They took the form of rolling-pins, which were evidently intended for ornament and not for use. A bow of ribbon was tied round the end of the pin by which the roller could be hung up. These glass rolling-pins were covered over with sentimental mottoes, generally accompanied by a ship, a typical feature of the decorations commonly used. Some of these little mementoes given away by sailors were of white semi-opaque glass, others were brilliantly coloured.
Nailsea glass works were noted for the Italian influence shown in the colour effects produced in them. Among other objects made at those famous glass works were flasks and bottles for wines and spirits in greens, browns, and blues, to which were added in smaller quantities red and yellow. Other trinkets of an ornamental character were glass tobacco pipes, bells, and coach horns. There were also Nailsea walking sticks made of twisted glass, and many curious cups. Most of these were given for luck, especially as love tokens when sailors were about to set out on a voyage, the superstition attached to the gift being that if the glass pin were broken it was a sign that the vessel in which the giver had sailed had been wrecked. Hence it was that a ribbon was securely attached, and the gift hung up out of harm's reach.
FIG. 85.—OLD WELSH LOVE SPOONS.
(In the National Museum of Wales.)
In association with glass rolling-pins and other love tokens there are many sundry curios which from the mottoes upon them were evidently given with a similar purpose. Even objects of metal and brass were frequently inscribed with loving reminders of the donor. The pleasing little trinket and patch boxes of enamels and glass, referred to in another chapter, were given from sentimental motives as evidenced by their inscriptions. Covers of pocket books and tobacco pouches were covered over with similar legends, like a delightful beadwork tobacco pouch in the Taunton Castle Museum, on which is the motto or sentiment, "LOVE ME FOR I AM THINE, 1631," wrought by a seventeenth-century needleworker.
Similar mottoes are found on the little pincushions formerly carried in the capacious pockets of women of olden time, sometimes wrought in needlework and at others in beads.