By day, Mark Harvey’s hands are wrapped around the wheel of a truck and trailer, hauling products from quarries from near and far back to Dromana. By night, back home in Hastings, those same hands are bending old spoons and forks into rings, bangles and pendants under the business name Spoontanious. Each piece is one-of-a-kind, with styles to suit different tastes and sizing that can be customised.
The idea came about just over a year ago. “It was actually put to me by my wife, Hayley. She said, ‘You should try making spoon rings!’ I think I’ve always had a bit of a creative flair with things like this,” Mark says.
The name very nearly went a different way. “I was going to call it Cutlerings, but we chose Spoontanious and it’s stuck; people love the name,” he says, giving Hayley credit for that too. Hayley runs her own venture, Wickety Wax, where some of Mark’s jewellery is sold.
“Hayley helps me out immensely by advertising for me on her own social media page, and I try to advertise for her also on my page with a cheeky little tag.”
This type of jewellery making is a craft with fascinating roots. Spoon rings are believed to date back to seventeenth-century England, when servants working in wealthy households couldn’t afford a proper wedding ring and turned to a more resourceful solution instead. According to folk lore, they would take a silver spoon belonging to the family they worked for and shape it into a ring for their intended, sometimes leaving the household crest still stamped into the metal. This occasionally led to servants being arrested for theft. The style faded for a time before resurfacing among the counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s, and has been enjoying a revival ever since as part of a shift toward upcycled and sustainable jewellery.
Mark works mainly with stainless steel and silver-plated cutlery, nothing newer than the early 1980s and some pieces dating back to the early 1900s. He favours the older silver-plated ware. “It’s softer and easier to work with,” he says. His toolkit has evolved out of necessity as much as choice; he now uses a proper ring press but started with “a cheap tool that lasted a day” before he began welding up his own equipment.
The process itself is straightforward, at least in his telling. “I measure for size, which determines how much I trim off, then ensure I have smooth ends, and then it’s time to start bending.”
I love it when people give me their own cutlery that holds a special meaning
Most of his raw material comes from op shops – both his own hunting and Hayley’s – along with donated pieces. It’s the donations with a story attached that mean the most to him. “I love it when people give me their own cutlery that holds a special meaning and ask me to make them into different pieces. That’s my favourite.”
Long hours on the road give Mark plenty of time to think, and he puts them to good use. “I normally think about what I can make to give myself that edge on the competition,” he says.
He doesn’t claim to have a favourite piece, but he doesn’t need to look far for proof that his work holds up. “I’m proud that Hayley wears some of my rings and bangles happily alongside her other jewellery.” Customers, he says, are often just as taken by it. “Most are blown away, and some don’t even realise until I tell them what it started as.”
Spoontanious has grown through Facebook, and Mark is already thinking about where to take it next. “A website would be great too, and I haven’t got Instagram, but perhaps I should,” he says. In the meantime, markets are where most people discover his work in person. “I plan to attend as many markets as I can.”
A full-time career out of it isn’t something he expects, but he’s not chasing that anyway. “At the moment, it’s just a hobby that also creates a little bit of extra cash for me.”
What keeps him at it is simpler than reinvention or ambition. “I wouldn’t say it’s unique, as it’s a very old craft, but I’m very happy to be able to carry on such a great idea. It’s a great feeling when I make a really nice piece; I get a kick out of it.”
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