Okay, ladies and gents, brace yourselves for a riveting posting on...rattail length. This is not an in-depth study, but rather a comparison of the rattail lengths on the tablespoons in my collection. The idea for this posting came about this morning as I was looking at a spoon I had just received in the mail (more about this new spoon later) and while looking at the back of the bowl, I began to think about rattail length, which prompted me to look at the rattails on my other spoons. Following are photographs of the various rattails:
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| Fig. 1 |
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| Fig. 2 |
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| Fig. 3 |
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| Fig. 4 |
The spoon on the left in Figure 1 has the longest rattail, and I picture it again on the left in Figure 4 alongside spoons with the least amount of rattail remaining. These spoons are all Britannia-standard (save the one on the right in Figure 4, which is an Irish example), and date from circa 1705 (the only dognose example) to 1718. The Irish spoon dates to 1723.
At one point, did all my spoons have rattails as long as the super-long rattail, the termini ("terminuses" sounds odd to me, but I probably couldn't use "termini" in a conversation and keep a straight face, either) of which have worn away over time? Having said that, the rattails of the spoons on the left and in the center of Figure 3 do appear to be complete, although not nearly as long as the super-long rattail. From the photographs, one can see that the rattails are in various states of completeness, and in some cases, I can feel rather than see that the rattail continues.
For someone who loves rattail spoons, I feel rather silly confessing that I don't quite know how the rattail part was made, meaning, was the rattail shaped and fashioned by hand, or was there some sort of casting process for the rattail? If any of you can shed light on this, it would be much appreciated!
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