The "N J H" Lovespoon

A number of months ago, I donated three custom, “to-be-carved-to-customer’s-specification” lovespoons to a church charity auction.  One couple, “N” and “J”, -- Huh, look at that, yet another “Mr. J” -- purchased two of the three.  With one thing or another we hadn’t gotten together to decide what they should look like until a couple of weeks ago.  There was a lot of discussion but they made their decision.

One spoon is to be a gift, so I’ll be talking about that one some other time. But they wanted the other spoon, their own personal Lovespoon, to be something completely different from anything that I had done before.  They wanted a spoon with “simple elegance” (their words).  They also wanted it to be a lettered spoon but they wanted an element of “Where’s Waldo” in it.  They didn’t want the letters to be obvious.  They wanted them hidden in plain sigh.  Things that make you say "Hmmmmm…"

They liked a “vine-like” spoon that my wife has hanging over the stove.  They could imagine some parts of the vine making an “N” and other parts of the vine making a “J” and suggested that I use that spoon as a starting place.  I don’t know if they will like how I hid the letters…the “J” really does take a bit of imagination to see.

When it was done and before they had a chance to see it, I showed the spoon to a mutual friend and asked if he could find their initials.  He said, “Well, I see the ‘N’ and I see the ‘J’ and I also see the ‘H’ that you included for their last name“.   I was a bit stupefied by this comment because I had designed in the ‘N’ and the ‘J’ but not an ‘H’.  But he was right.  Once he pointed it out, it was obvious.  There it was as clear as day. Man, am I good or what??? :-)  

Here is the proof:  

All in all, I really like this design.  It is much more delicate than most my previous spoons, particularly the lettered spoons.  I don’t know if it has the “simple elegance” they were looking for and I don’t know if the letters are subtle enough, but I do think this is probably my favorite spoon to date.

One for the Bench:

See everything.  Overlook a great deal.  Correct a little. - Pope John XXIII

‘Til next time…Keep makin’ chips!