Antique French Asparagus Serving Spoon

"You never see these — I found spoons like these one by one in brocantes, and they are very, very rare," Patricia exclaims, and her words say everything about this asparagus server from Chanteduc, her farmhouse and cooking school in Vaison-la-Romaine. Likely English, the piece is silver-plate, its broad, fan-shaped blade pierced in an intricate pattern of parallel slots and decorative openwork. The handle is in the shape of a delicate asparagus spear. Patricia gathered pieces like this individually from French brocantes over many years — the kind of patient, knowing collecting that defines her relationship with French domestic life. Asparagus servers of this quality are genuinely scarce, designed for a moment in the meal — the arrival of the season's first spears — that the French once treated with real ceremony.