Spoon, foundry spoon

Printer's spoon with angled metal shaft and wooden handle. The bowl has small holes punched into it. Some cooled and hardened molten metal remains on the back of the bowl. 'Chrome plated' is stamped onto the metal shaft.

It was used by print workers at The Guardian newspaper on Farringdon Road. The spoon would remove dross from the lead alloy in the line-casting mechanism of a Harris Intertype Monarch typesetting machine. Lines of type called 'slugs' were cast from molten metal heated electrically inside the machine. Hot lead would often be spat out of the machines onto their operators.

The Guardian stopped printing using 'hot metal' processes in 1987. The following year the newspaper donated an Intertype Monarch machine and various hand tools, including this ladle, to the Museum of London.