When I translated a brochure for the Wartburg including a description of the collections, I had problems finding a term for Martin Luther’s Reiselöffel. This just shows how hard things were before the Internet, because today I can find all kinds of folding spoons, but then, the term didn’t occur to me until it was too late.
Martin Luther’s spoon:
Not only are there plastic spoons:
but there are even fake medieval spoons for your medieval table:
Then again, one could go straight to a lawyer whose hobby is spoons (lots of spoon links).
(Via Udo Vetter – see also this link, given in the comments, with a picture of the largest spoon carved by Horst Wesemann)
SO, the obvious question remains: How did you translate Reiselöffel back then?
Ah, now I was afraid you were going to ask that. I thought I’d been saved because I can’t find the published version of my translation. But I think it was ‘traveller’s spoon’. On the one hand, I have now read on the Internet that pilgrims used their scallop shells as spoons, on the other hand ‘travellers’ is a British term for gypsies.
You very carefully wrote “the largest spoon carved by Horst Wesemann,” i.e., there could be others that are larger, carved by other people. Juse for fun, check out this spoon by Oldenburg, pictured here:
http://www.welcometoamerica.us/photos/mn-02-spoon.gif
or here:
http://www.ece.umn.edu/users/jnam/html/photo.html
It doesn’t travel well or fold, though.
Now there’s a name from the distant past. Not another lawyer interested in spoons? The Oldenburg one is more interesting than the wooden one, if I dare say it. Here’s your first link: Oldenburg spoon – the second one doesn’t seem to work.
Ooops, sorry. I just cut and pasted from the webpage without testing. (And I obviously didn’t spell-check my typing, either.) Here’s the second one:
http://www.ee.umn.edu/groups/msp/Grads2/Jeho/gif/cherry.gif