This spoon is a typical example of a type popular across Europe in the first decade of the eighteenth century until about 1770. The style emerged in England in around 1710, and has become known as 'Hanoverian' because it was popular during the reigns of the first two Hanoverian monarchs (George I and George II), who ruled between 1714-1760. The ridge or ‘rat-tail’ at the heel of this example (where the stem joins the bowl) is characteristic of spoons made before around 1730. The finial of the spoon has been designed so that the spoon can be placed on the table with its open bowl down (the opposite of how it would be set on the table today) and this is why the three initials are engraved on what we would now think of as the back of the spoon. This arrangement followed French fashions, which had developed at the end of the seventeenth century.The three initials on the finial are almost certainly those of a husband and his wife. The top initial is the man's family name; the two letters below are the initials of the first name of the husband and wife.