An interesting pattern of silver cups in Elizabethan times were the “trussing cups,” namely, two goblets of silver, squat in shape and broad in bowl, which fitted together at the rim, so that one was inverted as a sort of cover on top of the other when they were not in use.  Drinking cups were sometimes made out of cocoanuts, mounted in silver, and often of ostrich eggs, similarly treated, and less frequently of horns hollowed out and set on feet.  Mediaeval loving cups were usually named, and frequently for some estates that belonged to the owner.  Cups have been known to bear such names as “Spang,” “Bealchier,” and “Crumpuldud,” while others bore the names of the patron saints of their owners.

A kind of cruet is recorded among early French table silver, “a double necked bottle in divisions, in which to place two kinds of liquor without mixing them.”  A curious bit of table silver in France, also, was the “almsbox,” into which each guest was supposed to put some piece of food, to be given to the poor.

Spoons were very early in their origin; St. Radegond is reported by a contemporary to have used a spoon, in feeding the blind and infirm.  A quaint book of instructions to children, called “The Babee’s Booke,” in 1475, advises by way of table manners: 

  “And whenever your potage to you shall be brought,
   Take your sponys and soupe by no way,
   And in your dish leave not your spoon, I pray!”

And a later volume on the same subject, in 1500, commends a proper respect for the implements of the table: 

  “Ne playe with spoone, trencher, ne knife.”

Spoons of curious form were evidently made all the way from 1300 to the present day.  In an old will, in 1477, mention is made of spoons “wt leopards hedes printed in the sponself,” and in another, six spoons “wt owles at the end of the handles.”  Professor Wilson said, “A plated spoon is a pitiful imposition,” and he was right.  If there is one article of table service in which solidity of metal is of more importance than in another, it is the spoon, which must perforce come in contact with the lips whenever it is used.  In England the earliest spoons were of about the thirteenth century, and the first idea of a handle seems to have been a plain shaft ending in a ball or knob.  Gradually spoons began to show more of the decorative instinct of their designers; acorns, small statuettes, and such devices terminated the handles, which still retained their slender proportions, however.  Finally it became popular to have images of the Virgin on individual spoons, which led to the idea, after a bit, of decorating the dozen with the twelve apostles.  These may be seen of all periods, differently elaborated.  Sets of thirteen are occasionally met with, these having one with the statue of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, with a lamb on his shoulders:  it is known as the “Master spoon.”

[Illustration:  Apostle spoons]