Today it’s another extra large cocobolo spoon at 16 inches and two more cocobolo rice scoops. They are part of the growing “For Sale” inventory.
Photographing large spoons is trickier than I think one would expect. It’s easy enough to capture a portion of one, but putting the whole thing in perspective is difficult without making them all look too similar.
It’s a pretty nice spoon and should last many years while resisting ugliness. It’s quite large and hefty, but as usual, has a balance that make one want to handle it. It’s substantial enough that I would advise against using it as a weapon on even the most unruly of children and would hesitate to inflict its mass upon an adult too. But it should safely whip the hell out of a pot of just about anything.
As mentioned, rice scoops, or rice paddles, are a favorite of mine. They require a wider piece of wood, and my cocobolo supply can accommodate only a few more. These two are not my finest work, but they are, in my opinion, very nice rice scoops with a few scratches and imperfections. I reserve extremely meticulous sanding for special pieces of cocobolo, the really dense (and darker) ones where the surface can be finished to almost perfectly flat, which the more colorful pieces often cannot be. If you look closely, crests and troughs can be seen in the grain, and this can’t really be sanded away.
They have an asymmetrical shape, which I think works really well for rice paddles, giving them a pinch of wabi sabi, which is my preferred aesthetic for most things. And I will agree with Wikipedia that the term ‘wabi sabi’ should not necessarily be confused with wasabi however much one enjoys it.