Roman Pewter Cignus Spoon with Coiled Swan-Neck Handle

4TH CENTURY A.D.

3 3/8 in. (42.4 grams, 85 mm).

With large oval bowl and a long, slender handle, compressed into S-shape and terminating in a stylised bird’s head.

Provenance

Found near Welney, Cambridgeshire, in 1985.

Literature

Cf. Johns, C.M., The Hoxne Late Roman Treasure: Gold Jewellery and Silver Plate, London, 2010, no.81, for identical.

Footnotes

Similar silver spoons (cygni), were found within a set of ten spoons (today at the British Museum with inventory nos. 1994,0408.81-90) with ownership inscriptions. The handle attachment of such spoons had some decorative profiling, and the name 'AVRVRSICINI' within the bowl was inlaid with niello. The spoons seems to have been produced by a Romano-British workshop of Late Antiquity (4th-5th centuries A.D.). The cygnus was a particular type of ligula. This type was characterised by a large, oval-shaped bowl, but was equipped, unlike the common ligula, with a shortened, recurved handle which terminated in a stylised water bird or swan's head (swan = cygnus in Latin).

CONDITION

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LOT 0787