wood

carved from one piece of wood. The thin end of the spoon has a circle cut out of it, and it's end has three small points.

Two geometric shapes are cut out of the spoon's neck.

length - 15.5 cm; width (max) - 5.3 cm

The collector (Borg De Balzan) from whom the museum acquired the item, died in Florence in 1896 (Emanuela found his obituary in the journal, founded in 1871 by Paolo Mantegazza, called l'Archivio per l'Antropologia e l'Etnologia, [n.26, 1896, p.369] ). The collector's name is listed in the item's MNAEF record.

Item was acquired by the MNAEF from Borg De Balzan. His obituary states that De Balzan was from Malta, worked as a representative of the French government in New York. He was an art collector who opened his private gallery to the public. He donated his rich collection of objects to the MNAEF, which is described in the obituary as the first building block of the Museum's holdings. [l'Archivio per l'Antropologia e l'Etnologia, [n.26, 1896, p.369]. Item was likely originally classified with a similiar spoon. While the item's description card carries the number 6754/1, in the original, older, general catalogue in which all the museum's items are listed, it is listed with the number 6754. In a copy of this larger catalogue, which is still used to keep information about the items, there is a note, dated from 1983, that states in the collection there are two spoons, and designates two separate numbers for each: 6754 - 6754/1.

This record was created as part of a research project, funded by a Faculty Research Grant from the Canadian Embassy in Italy in August 2007, Emanuela Rossi.

Stacey Loyer helped with the translation for this record.