Spoon rest

I'm here today to brighten a dull, rain-swept day.

I decided to settle down and do one of two homework tasks for my Italian lessons.
"What souvenirs do you buy on holiday in Italy?"

My purchases are heavily food and wine based (enogastronomici) with very rare purchases of dust gathering, carved, knitted, moulded, cast ornaments or knick-knacks.

This spoon rest is, however, a rare purchase made last year from a shop in Sardinia.
The shop was closing after the tourist season with heavy discounts and I fell for the charms of the shop owner.
She told me the design was a stylised peacock (pavone), or so I thought.

So I was writing up my homework in Italian but had no idea what a spoon rest is in Italian. My translation app was not really helpful (I didn't trust it) so I reached for my Collins Italian dictionary.
The heavy book, weighing in at just over 2.5 kg broke away from its cover and fell onto my big toe. The air was rent with blue tinged oaths, mostly in English. The dictionary was of no use either.

I hit upon a brilliant idea and looked for spoon rests on the Italian version of eBay, but most of them referred to...a spoon rest....in English.

Eventually I found an Internet site describing traditional ceramic wares in Sardinia and referred to this particular and famous design, not of a peacock but a "pavoncella". What is this I hear you say? Well, it is a lapwing, the design probably from an Arabian Phoenix.

Well, you could have knocked me down with a peacock feather.

Here is a reminder of a Lapwing.

Oh, the spoon rest? That is a "poggiamestolo" from the two words poggiare, to rest and mestolo, a ladle.
So now, Italian speakers, what is your version of a spoon rest?



As for my broken toe, I have another nine so don't worry about that.