Accession Number

1986.008.0162

Creation Date

circa 1620

Description

A 13.5-centimeter-long silver spoon recovered from the wreck of the 1622 galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha. The Atocha had traveled to the ports of “Tierra Firme” - Cartagena, Colombia and Portobelo, Panama. Large cargoes of silver were taken on board at both ports, but especially so in Portobelo. Many passengers coming from Peru boarded the ship there. Peru was the leading source of silver mining and production at that time, and many of these people were shipping silver objects, including utensils. This relatively humble spoon was almost certainly part of a person’s personal shipment of goods.

Exhibition Label

Case Caption (2023):

A COLONIST— DOÑA MARÍA DE AYALA

Doña María de Ayala had traveled from Spain to Potosí with her husband, Martin Salgado de Rivera, in 1615. High in the Andes, Potosí has cool, wet summers, icy winters, and sits on a barren plain. Everything the couple needed had to be carried up the mountains by llamas. María’s day would have been spent working with her servants to stretch household supplies, haggling with local traders for food and fuel, and mending linens and clothes that could not be readily replaced. Occasionally, floods and earthquakes would add to María’s troubles.

But her husband’s appointments had made them wealthy. When they sailed for Spain, they were accompanied by María’s maid, Catalina, and two very young, possibly Indigenous, servant girls. They all drowned aboard the Nuestra Señora de Atocha.
Object Caption (2023):

Spoons
Silver (c.1600)
Gift of Jamestown Inc.
1986.008.0162, 1986.008.1548, 1987.003.0001