Crystal Clear

Dear All,

Yes, that looks like a Bob Snively spoon to me. Having said that, there were 3 possible sources I know of, for ornately carved ivory spoons, and it could conceivably have come from any of the three:

1. Y.F. Yang was having them made by an ivory carver and his son, who'd 'escaped' from the PRC to [then British] Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution. He was putting them in clear Quartz bottles, to 'tart' them up, and make them more saleable. At one time, beautiful plain quartz bottles, like beautiful plain white Nephrite Jade bottles, were extremely common, and very cheap.

Once, when I bought a number of fine overlays from him in his Ocean Terminal shop, Y.F. gave me a fine plain Quartz [#30 in my 1987 catalogue] as a gift! It is a wonderful bottle, and today I might pay a few thousand US$ to buy it; but at the time (ca.1979-1990), they could barely give them away.

I think Y.F. commissioned 30 or 40 spoons, though possibly as many as 50.

2. Bob Stevens, though he designed rather than carved. But his Japanese partner of 18 years would carve them. They never made more than 10 spoons, unless I'm mistaken.

3. Bob Snively. He started because he and Jessamine, z"l, bought a plain Quartz bottle from Y.F. with an ornate spoon, and it got broken. They contacted Y.F. for a replacement, but he had run out and was trying to find someone to make more. Bob sent Y.F. a message, that he'd found some old ivory chopsticks and would attempt to make one. A few weeks later, Bob sent Y.F. his second spoon (he replaced the broken spoon with his first one), and Y.F. was very impressed.

Bob made somewhere between 30 and 50. This spiral 'barleycorn' style was one design; another was a hand holding an incense shovel, with or without a moving bracelet around the wrist; a third was a knobby bough, the 'leaf' on the end the cup of the spoon.

And in silver I've made about 50 spoons and in gold, I've made about 20 spoons from cold forging 2.4mm [3/32 of an inch] thick soft (unforged drawn) wire, using sterling silver wire or 18 K gold wire. I hammered at one end to form the bowl of the spoon, and lightly tapped the straight shaft, to get it to 'harden'. I scratched JBS on the bowl of many of them. They are not that ornate, but are 'noble' metals.

Oh, and last but certainly not least, I bought an Emerald Green Jadeite rectangular flattened flask on raised footrim from the NYC Martin Schoen collection in June 1988, one of 2 magnificent Emerald Green Jadeite SBs from that famous collection. It has a gem quality rose pink Tourmaline stopper with a spoon carved from Jadeite matching the bottle!
Best,
Joey