Spoon

Russians: Cossacks: Don river Cossacks

European Russia, Don Cossack Region, Ust-Medveditsa Okrug, Cossack village Kletskaya

late 19th - early 20th century

Wood: birch

length 25.5

РЭМ 1040-61

The Don Cossacks used not only ordinary spoons for eating and cooking, but also spoons brought home from pilgrim journeys. Such spoons, similar to blessing spoons of the Solovetsky Monastery, had on them a carved hand not with three finger tips held together like Nizhny Novgorod’s craftsmen did for spoons sold at fairs, but with a priestly stavros arrangement of the fingers symbolizing “IС ХС” (which became known in Russia in the second half of the 17th century), thus not contradicting the Old Russian tradition.