Caddy spoons have been crafted in a variety of materials such as treen, tortoiseshell, mother of pearl, pewter and many other mediums popular in their day. However we are only interested here in those crafted from silver. Early spoons would have been hand made and shaped to be accommodated into tea caddies that were crafted to hold the expensive tea leaf content. These early spoons were either hand raised or caste. The shape of tea caddies naturally affected the shape and design of the caddy spoon or ladle. The standard characteristic of the large bowl and small handle often with a shell motif were the natural development to fill this need.

Little reference exists to large scale production of caddy spoons until after 1769 when one John Pickering patented a stamping machine that radically changed the production of small silver articles. Dating early caddy spoons is not helped by the early practice not to fully hallmark small pieces. The London Assay Office for instance often only stamped the sterling mark or makers mark or both on the lower part of the shank. This meant the absence of a date letter makes identification of its year of manufacture less accurate. In these cases where a maker has been in business for many years exact dating is almost impossible.

The production of the first short stemmed caddy spoon is believed to associated with William Sumner I and Richard Croslley around 1775 (Caddy Spoons an illustrated guide – John Norrie). Norrie states “To sum up, the advent of the earliest of the short stemmed ladles in the 1770’s marked the last phase of the long handled forms that began some time in the 1740s and were progressively shortened during intervening years, while at the same time heralding what was virtually a new type of spoon, owing its success largely to the stamping machine”