When Consilientist | Futurist Stuart Dambrot alerted us to Norwegian designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen’s toast spoons, we were totally smitten. We envisioned them brushed with olive oil and a cut clove of garlic, to eat our soup/stew/eggs with. Then we realized that they were part of a bigger study, of the idea that “Like the fascintating species of nature are a result of biological evolution, our everyday products are results of an artificial evolution; both are the results of optimization of hereditary characteristics from generation to generation.”

Feeling that the spoon had come to the end of its evolution, having hardly changed for hundreds of years (except in its decoration), Wilhelmsen set about to explore its evolutionary possibilities, adding into the mix ‘different ways of human eating’ (necessity just about always being the mother of invention). The experiment came up with some “interesting spin-offs, like the whisk and spoon combination for cooking, the camping spoon with a can opener, and the spoon with a thermo chrome colour to know the temperature of the food while eating or cooking.” She calls them (R)evoluting Spoons.

It made us think of our personal favorites in the spoon world: a hammered silver double-bowled tasting spoon made by our friend Holton Rower, and an oddly-shaped hand-hewn spoon from Maria Robledo, who brought it back from a market in Colombia, South America. Both have very long handles, which we imagine has something to do with our own evolutionary process; they make us cook and taste things better…

…our need creating our own personal ways of using them.

We invite you to upload any stories or pictures of exceptional or particularly eccentric spoons on our Facebook page.

Thanks a million Stuart!

Related post: the oddness and power of real cook’s tools

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