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I can’t stop saying Spong

spong

A “Spong mincer” sounds like a particularly unpleasant homosexual. Or a serial killer with a fetish for one very particular body part.

I bought a Spong over the weekend, and it is neither. It’s a mincer, but unlike the one I have already (and the Spong in the picture), it doesn’t clamp to a table edge, it just stands on the surface. Much easier to set up, then clean.

I like to take leftover pork roast or the ass-end of a ham and grind them into ham salad.

Spong was a brand to be reckoned with. Have a look at an eBay search. Mine is a Fifties model in green enamel. But the old black ones with gold accents are really beautiful.

James Osborn Spong was born in 1839. Yes, yes…it’s one of those remarkable Victorian stories. He founded Spong and Co. at the age of 16, and made heaps of domestic shit. The company wasn’t 100% completely wound up until 1985 and the retirement of the last Spong (a great-grandson).

Oddly enough, there isn’t a Wikipedia entry for Spong. Damned Americans. Though ‘pedia informed me that Spong is a surname in multiple Germanic-speaking cultures. In England, it is an archaic term for a narrow strip of land.

The place I found out more about Spong is my gift to you this day: Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History.

Grace’s Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 118,799 pages of information and 172,070 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

If you like to read about industrial history — and, let’s face it, who doesn’t? — you’re welcome.

August 3, 2016 — 7:04 pm
Comments: 23