Stanley Bailey Ineson silver spoon research papers

Collection

Identifier: Col-0001

Scope and Contents

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The Ineson papers were generated in the course of building his silver spoon collection. The bulk of the papers consists of correspondence, including orders, inquiries, requests for appraisals, and more general correspondence. The rest of the collection consists of subject files, clippings, lists of silversmiths, rubbings of touchmarks, photographs of silver, and wax impressions of touchmarks from the backs of silver spoons.

Stanley Ineson advertised for old silver spoons in a number of periodicals. Many of the letters here are responses to his advertisements. They often describe silver spoons (and other silver pieces), offering them for sale. Other letters ask Ineson to appraise silver. Some letters record Ineson's interaction with other avid silver collectors including George B. Cutten, Robert Ensko, Ernest and Lavinia Currier, Charles H. Batchelder, and Irving W. Davis.

The subject files give specific documentation to Ineson's collecting by preserving lists of items in his collection, photographs of their touchmarks, and fragile wax impressions of touchmarks. Ineson's research in dating silver and identifying American silversmiths is also made available in these papers.

Dates

Creation: 1931 - 1960

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research use.

Biographical / Historical

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Stanley Bailey Ineson was a collector of early American silver spoons. He lived in Glen Cove, New York, with a vacation home in Manchester, Vermont. He worked on Wall Street at Spencer, Trask & Co. Born in Seymour, Connecticut, on December 5, 1882 (some sources erroneously give 1881) to Joseph Ineson, Stanley Ineson graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in 1907. He married Phoebe Pearsall (1890-1972; first name also seen spelled Phebe) in 1915, and they had at least two children, Phoebe and Thomas Pearsall Ineson. Mr. Ineson died in January 1970 in Vermont.

In 1930, Ineson began collecting early American silver spoons after inheriting a collection. He amassed some 1,700 items over the next 15 years. Ineson's collection was eventually purchased and presented to the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum by a third party in 1962. But beyond collection spoons, Ineson was curious about who made the spoons, and he researched the silversmiths and the different forms of spoons. His spoon collection was exhibited in several museums during his lifetime. Mr. Ineson lectured about spoons as well. The Inesons also collected early American blown glass and pewter.

Full Extent

8 boxes

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

License: This record is made available under an Universal 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license.

Additional Description

Arrangement

The Ineson papers came to the Downs Collection in 1976. They were processed some time thereafter by the manuscript library staff. Some order was apparently imposed on the papers at that time, with about half of the correspondence being arranged alphabetically, while the other half was arranged chronologically. In 2008, all letters were arranged alphabetically.

The papers were re-processed in 1989. At this time some order was imposed on the subject files. The individual shelf numbers that had been necessary for retrieval under the Termatrex indexing system have been noted on the file folders so that the previous order can be restored if some reason is found to do so, so that the Termatrex system can still be used while it is available, and so that previously published citations to the papers using these shelf numbers can still be interpreted.

Attached to the finding aid is an index compiled from three of the original four name indexes to the papers. None of the indexes were labeled as to exactly what was being indexed, although one was an index to correspondents. Since those names are listed in the body of the finding aid, that index has not been repeated. Of the other three indexes, one seems to be an index to names found within the bodies of the letters in Boxes 1-5; the other indexes seem to cover the subject files in Box 6. In any case, all these indexes are now in one alphabetical listing.