My parents' souvenir spoons; let me show you them.
January 23, 2010 7:02 PM   Subscribe

I have inherited a collection of souvenir spoons. Can you suggest funky or creative ways to display these?

They came with the standard souvenir spoon display board, which I don't care for. For what it is worth, I have not visited all of the places that these spoons were obtained, though I respect the fact that my parents chose to go to these places and obviously had nice memories of these trips.
posted by Morrigan to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (14 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
The standard souvenir spoon display board can be funky and interesting in its own right. I inherited by husband's grandmother's souvenir spoons (some of which are over 100 years old and probably valuable, but I'm not planning on parting with them so I've never checked) and I have them hanging in my kitchen in their regular old display rack. There's something very homey and cozy about them, and they get lots of comments. So, my suggestion is to keep yours in their original display and embrace the kitsch!
posted by amyms at 7:12 PM on January 23, 2010


Couple of quick ideas:

1. Get a shadow box and arrange them in an interesting way. Rather than just lined up perfectly straight, maybe stagger them, or fan them out like sun rays or something. If you wanted to do several little displays, you could probably find cheap postcards for each of the vacation spots, or even pictures of your parents on their trips, to use as backdrops.

2. If you have enough of them, I think it would be completely awesome if you could figure out a way to make a kitchen window curtain out of them, kind of like those funky beaded doorway curtains. If they aren't too valuable, you could drill and wire them together so you can hang them, or maybe hot glue them to a chain or something...

3. Depending on your decor (and if they aren't too valuable), you could stick magnets on the back and display them on your fridge.
posted by MegoSteve at 7:25 PM on January 23, 2010


You could hot glue them to a peice of mat board and frame them. Hot Glue will peel right off (the spoon, not the board) if you ever wanted to take them down, and if you have a frame shop cut you a standard size of mat board it won't cost much to frame. You can get really wild with the pattern that you glue them in, or even just glue them randomly.

This is the idea, but done with keys.
posted by TooFewShoes at 7:28 PM on January 23, 2010


Piece* of mat board. (Sorry about that)

I forgot to say that if you like a funkier look you can always go for a wild mat color or go for basic black and then put them into a funky frame. The pictures I linked to are quite reserved.
posted by TooFewShoes at 7:33 PM on January 23, 2010


Here to second the shadowbox idea.
posted by bebrave! at 7:45 PM on January 23, 2010


I have the same problem/question/white whale. Bombay Company used to have some handsome display cases that weren't froopy and were glass-fronted cabinets (thereby fixing dust/ick factor) and were also quite decent, capacity-wise. Sadly they went out if business, but there *should* be something out there. Good hunting.
posted by mimi at 7:57 PM on January 23, 2010


They might make an interesting mobile.

Alternatively, I've considered using two pieces of molding at a high chair-rail-like strip of wall around a room, with a gap in between, with interesting items in the gap. Spoons could be perfect. The bottom piece of molding should be very deep so that it makes a ledge on top for your spoons.
posted by amtho at 8:22 PM on January 23, 2010


You can stick them directly to the wall or along your fireplace mantle or window frames or wherever with blu tack. Use the blue stuff though, I find that the other colors don't seem to stick very well. I also use it to stick things to my car dash.
posted by BoscosMom at 8:25 PM on January 23, 2010


If you don't mind a permanent display, something like this silverware-embedded resin backsplash could be interesting. Even if you didn't do a whole backsplash, the embedding might be a cool way to display them as funky art with a funky background color or a map in the background or something.

Might be a lot of work, though...
posted by BlooPen at 9:29 PM on January 23, 2010


windchime?
posted by CathyG at 10:16 PM on January 23, 2010


Lamp shade, chandelier.
posted by hortense at 11:07 PM on January 23, 2010


Rotating spoon tree!
posted by sammyo at 5:26 AM on January 24, 2010


If you're not opposed to altering the spoons, it might be cool to make them into spoon rings. A fun way to honor your parents interests in your own style!
posted by bloody_bonnie at 3:34 PM on January 24, 2010


Got twelve of them? Make a clock out of them.
posted by IndigoSkye at 6:15 PM on January 24, 2010 [1 favorite]


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