Mote Spoons, crafted during the latter half of the 17th Century and in use for about a hundred years after that, were practical necessities in the early years of tea drinking. Long before the advent of ready-to-use tea bags, actual tea leaves had to be steeped within each teacup. When the tea was ready, the spoon was used to fish out the soaked bits of leaves.
These spoons, with their pierced bowls, were also used to separate the larger tea leaves stored within a tea chest, from the chaff of grit, stones, twigs and even dead insects that managed to find their way into the bags of raw tea leaves during the harvesting process.
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Another aspect of the mote spoon’s design was its narrow and usually pointed handle, which allowed it to be pushed down the spout of the teapot to unclog any tea leaves that accumulated, preventing the steeped tea from being poured out.
The patterns and shapes of the piercing in the bowls of the spoons aids greatly in dating the pieces, with the earliest designs having simple holes punched through the bowl and latter versions having much more elaborately-patterned cuts.
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