Friday, July 25, 2003


the spoon & i, part iii

long-time readers know i am fascinated by cupping spoons, those deep-bowled beauties professional coffee tasters use to sample coffee.

for example, stuart allan's battered antique hawaiian cupping spoon. . .

(he did indeed send me the pic as requested! thank you for keeping your promises promptly, stuart. i respect that highly!)

there are what? maybe 50 people in the world who are known as truly expert cuppers, so collecting pictures of all their favorite spoons shouldn't be too hard.

the fuzzy beauty in this pic is an antique cupping spoon, possibly more than 100 years old, given by the president of brazil to former scaa prez steve colten's father, who cupped for the famous old coffee firm j. aron.

faithful readers may recall that i also encountered colten's travel spoon. obviously he needs a travel spoon, as his ornately worked piece of history is too precious to carry about.

the hand is colten's own, and i believe the background is the terrazzo cupping table at his office.

some cuppers are uninterested in spoons. they pride themselves on grasping whatever piece of pressed tin flatware that's lying about.

but i prefer the aesthetic ritual, even as don schoenholt (on the right, front, side angle, in suit jacket) of gillies coffee -- himself a famed cupper -- delights in gloomy eeyore-like predictions of cupping's demise.

"cupping coffee is an art," he sighs, "an art of tasting in an age when the scientists of flavor are winning." of course he traces his cupping lineage back to coffeemen who learned to cup from the inventor of cupping. . .

i've asked don for a pic of his cupping spoons, to which he retorted, "nonsense and piffle." this led me to inquire puckishly if his spoons were ugly.

"i find them of a somewhat plain but handsome design," he replied in a tone as frosty as his sugar-rimmed iced coffee glasses. oh well. on the other hand, he did describe for me his unique design for a robusta-tasting spoon: a strainer with a fancy handle. . .

in the meantime, i will remind readers of my own regulation scaa cupping spoon given to me by ted lingle (center, holding document here).

next spoon on my list: that of lindsay bolger. . .

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