Help identifying age & maker for a silver salt? spoon. Richard Crossley?

Here's my next item I'm trying to identify.  It's been used as a sugar or jam spoon in my family but I think it might be a salt spoon?

Reading from left to right we have the lion (passant?  is that the right term?) then a lower case 't' in what might be a shield shape or a square with cut off edges (the bottom is worn, so not sure if the rounded shape was original), then silhouette of head & shoulders (I think they are looking to the right, but can't be sure due to wear) and then the capital initials RC in a rectangle (upside down compared to all the others) [edited to say sorry, the photo turned upside down on posting, so this is all back to front!]

The closest mark I can find to mine is Richard Crossley - it doesn't look exactly the same, but I can't tell if that's because mine is so worn.  I've also found a date letter that looks like mine and has a king's head stamp looking to the right for 1794, which seems to be the time that Richard Crossley was working, but I didn't think my spoon was that old!

Can anyone with some silver knowledge advise?  I know nothing, so have literally just been googling to try to find some marks that look like the ones on my spoon!  

This looks like Birmingham 1817, though the Birmingham
mark seems to have been rubbed away.

Any idea who the maker might have been then?

Should be easy to find with the date

I've looked and can't find any mark that looks right for that time for Birmingham at all. I guess I'll just have to keep my eye open for anything that looks similar in future.

Pity that the hallmarks are so worn and some altogether lost.

The initials 'RC' in a rectangle confirms that it was made by Richard Crossley.

As the latter operated out of London, it follows that the hallmark will reflect that provenance.

Seal - your guess of 1794 may well be right.

However, the 't' date mark in a (worn) shield would seem to indicate London 1834 as it is somewhat stumpier than the longer 't' font & shield used in London 1794.

As for usage of the spoon, I dunno. There is no scale on the photos but it looks far too big to be a salt spoon.

Please post the dimensions.

Thank you so much for your reply. The spoon is approx 10cm in length and about 2cm across the bowl. I thought it might be a salt spoon because I saw a similar sized & shaped one for sale with that label - but of course, there's no guarantee the seller knew what they were talking about, so that might not have been a salt spoon either!

It's annoying the marks are so worn, but it's had a lot of polishing - my father told me that my grandmother had a dedicated 'spoon polising day' each week, whether they needed polishing or not!

After Googling around a bit, it looks like your item is a a jam or marmalade spoon. Possibly also a cream spoon.

However, if it was indeed a salt spoon, then it would explain why everybody croaked so early in those days.

Coalman wrote:After Googling around a bit, it looks like your item is a a jam or marmalade spoon.  Possibly also a cream spoon.

However, if it was indeed a salt spoon, then it would explain why everybody croaked so early in those days.  

" then it would explain why everybody croaked so early in those days."

You may well be right - my grandparents used to have a salt crust on top of their food, they added so much!

It's the right size for adding salt to a batch of bread dough, but a little bit fancy for the job. I use a modern stainless steel spoon for the bread and keep this one for jam or sugar.