Terms of the Trade: Mote Spoon
BADA member David Buck of Steppes Hill Farm Antiques explores the history of the Mote Spoon.
The tiniest mote of dust, or a tiny piece of a substance; a speck, is how the Oxford English Dictionary describes the Old English word 'mote'. Despite its high price and desirability, tea would still have been imported and sold in a relatively crude state in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, containing plenty of dust and large tea leaves or motes.