There is nothing quite like a good antique treen bowl carved by hand or turned on a lathe many years ago and think of the tree grown many years previously to the bowl. Spoons and antique bowls were very personal objects, people had their own bowl and spoon which they used, maybe identified by the owner with an initial, symbol or just a knot in the wood. To me I love to see the shape of aged wooden bowl, it will not be perfectly round, like it was originally made, but in fact more oval where the wood has shrunk over the years.The colour of antique wooden bowls will vary according to the type of wood used to turn or carve this piece of treenware, a large majority of bowls particularly the da
They look like egg cups, turned in boxwood, one end for a hens egg the other for a ducks egg..... but no that is not their purpose. These antique treen pieces are in fact apothecary measurers, made also in silver and pewter. They were made in different sizes and sometimes have numbers stamped on them the largest being 8s for eight spoonfuls and the smallest being 1s. The most common size is the 5s, the size for eggs hence the confusion but in fact the 5s was commonly used for to make soda water. The largest cup was for bicarbonate of soda and the smaller one for citric acid. These measurers were also used for Seidlitz mixture, this contained three powders tartaric acid, potasium sodium tartr
