Full Figured 3D Souvenir Spoon w/ Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat

Silver : Sterling Silver : Souvenir Spoons : Figural

 

This is a Full Figured 3D Souvenir Spoon with the Cheshire Cat from the book "Alice in Wonderland". This 4 & 3/4" Spoon has the Cheshire Cat perched on the top of the handle. The bowl is engraved "Chester" and it it has the Hallmarks for English Sterling and is dated 1906-07 and has the Makers Marks of " JL / GL". The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat appearing in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice first encounters it at the Duchess's house in her kitchen, and then later outside on the branches of a tree, where it appears and disappears at will, engaging Alice in amusing but sometimes vexing conversation. The cat sometimes raises philosophical points that annoy or baffle Alice. It does, however, appear to cheer her up when it turns up suddenly at the Queen of Hearts' croquet field, and when sentenced to death baffles everyone by making its body disappear, but its head remain visible, sparking a massive argument between the executioner and the King and Queen of Hearts about whether something that does not have a body can indeed be beheaded. At one point, the cat disappears gradually until nothing is left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. It is this unusual disappearing act for which most people remember the Cheshire Cat. Cheshire is not an actual breed of cat: the English county of Cheshire is famous for its cheese making, salt, and silk, as well as being a major railway junction, but no mention is made of any unique breeding. However, it has been speculated that the Cheshire cat was intended to be a British Short hair, as that is the cat breed that Carroll saw on a label of Cheshire Cheese. The phrase first appears in print in John Wolcot's pseudonymous Peter Pindar's "Pair of Lyric Epistles" in 1795: "Lo, like a Cheshire cat our court will grin." The cat carving in St Nicolas Church, Cranleigh. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says grinning like a Cheshire cat is "an old simile, popularized by Lewis Carroll". Brewer adds, "The phrase has never been satisfactorily accounted for, but it has been said that cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat that looked as though it was grinning". The cheese was cut from the tail end, so that the last part eaten was the head of the smiling cat. Another origin for the story concerns the cats that lived in the port of Chester. Until the late 1970s, a monument to the Cheshire Cat stood beside the River Dee, where there had formerly been a cheese warehouse. It was said that cats sitting on the dock would wait for the rats and mice to leave the ships transporting Cheshire cheese to London and were the happiest cats in the kingdom – hence their grins. The monument was destroyed when Copfield House, which stood on the site of the warehouse, was demolished in 1979.

Item ID: RL-4220

--------------------
HW