Historical Uses
Before the place setting became popular around 1700, people brought their own spoons to the table, carrying them in the same way that people today carry wallet and keys. In pre-modern times, ownership of a silver spoon was an indication of social class, denoting membership in the land-owning classes. In the Middle Ages, when farmers and craftsmen worked long hours and frequently got dirt under their fingernails, it was important to not be mistaken for a serf or escaped slave. Under these circumstances, a silver spoon served the functional equivalent of passport, driving licence, and credit card. Since most members of the land-owning classes were smallhold farmers and craftsmen, the silver spoon was primarily a lower-middle-class cultural marker.
Silver spoons, because of their weight and number, were often one of the most valuable parts of a middle-class household's effects, a traditional target for burglars. For example, in the feature film Far and Away, the character Shannon plans to pay for her emigration from Ireland to the United States with spoons that she stole from her wealthy landowner parents.
Beyond their value and aesthetics, silver utensils self-sanitize: silver has antimicrobial properties, due to the oligodynamic effect.
Silver spoons have also been used to detect poison, particularly in the Korean Joseon Dynasty: due to its reactivity, silver tarnishes on contact with sulfur, thus detecting the presence of arsenic sulfides and warning of arsenic poisoning.
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