Hardy's Kidney spoons

Hi, today's post about antique fishing lures covers something fairly simple and straightforwards, the Hardy's Kidney Spoon. Although maybe not that straightforwards!, as in the Hardy's catalogues you do get a bit of variation in the naming. The Kidney Spoon appears, but there again so does a listing for the Extra Heavy Kidney Spoon. However, within the catalogues that I have they don't appear at the same time. So are they different products or the same?

I assume that they are called Kidney Spoons because they are shaped like a kidney! They are described as half scaled,which from the picture should be obvious as to why. And the Extra Heavy Spoons were made from genuine Sheffield plate(steel?). They were given a nice copper coating on the outside, and a shiny, silver coloured coating on the inner side.

As you can see, the spoon above has been provided with a chain link and a large,single hook. Very often in the catalogues they were displayed with a treble hook from one end,or possibly even a treble hook at each end. The imprinted name, Hardy Bros Alnwick appears on the inside of the spoon above, but it can appear on the outer copper side as well(possibly only on the Extra Heavy Spoons,maybe this was a distinguishing feature?).

Back in 1937 there was a range of spoons covering different dimensions. They ranged from a 1 inch length up to 3 inches. The corresponding weights of these being, 2 1/2 to 12 drams, and the corresponding prices being, 1 shilling and 3 pence, up to 2 shillings and sixpence respectively.

These spoons appeared to be on sale for a long time in some variant or other,reportedly between about 1900 and the early 1960s. For most of their life the product was marketed as copper outside,silver inside, but there was a period up until the early 1950s when a gold outside,silver inside model was promoted. This later spoon was sold in a slightly, smaller size range of ,1 inch up to 2 1/2 inches in length. I don't know if this was instead of,or as well as the copper/silver combo. Apparently, for the final few years of distribution the original copper/silver combination was the only one on offer.

What is their value? Well they are not particularly rare, but they have not appeared upon eBay for some weeks. I suspect a selling price will be around the £8- £10 mark.

I think other manufacturers of antique fishing tackle,such as Allcocks, had similar products.

In summary then, the shape of the spoon determines its name. The pattern upon the spoon may vary with Hardy's spoons, typically like the above, and at least with Hardy's spoons their origin should be clearly marked.

OK that's enough for this posting, tune in next time for another view of Vintage British Fishing lures.