Frank Cassa offers no profound explanation for why he’s amassed the world’s largest collection of spoon rests. He says he just likes to collect things. But the collection is more than just kitsch — it’s a living tribute to his late, beloved wife.
At 90-years-old, Cassa possesses the world record — as recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records — for the largest collection of spoon rests, those rarely glorified kitchen utensils that keep sloppy spoons from soiling spotless counters. At the moment, he has nearly 1,000, up from 338 when he secured the coveted Guinness honors in 2000.
Cassa, who has lived in the same Hall Street home in Clinton Hill for 60 years, inherited the spoon-rest-collecting hobby from his late wife, Catherine, who came upon the seed of their obsession during a visit to the Bahamas in the 1970s.
That first spoon-rest, the origin of the collecting fervor to come, is an innocuous baby blue, with a map of New Providence Island on the ladle. It hangs next to Cassa’s refrigerator, near a sub-collection of owl-shaped spoon-rests.
“My wife said, ‘This is nice,’” recalled Cassa, as he recounted that fateful day that would ultimately turn his kitchen and living room into kitchen-utensil galleries.
“My wife said, ‘It even has a thermostat in the middle. We could use that in the kitchen.’ We went to several more islands and ended up coming back with 10 spoon rests.”
And so it began. Cassa and his wife proceeded to go on 17 more cruises, and two trips to Europe, each time returning with more and more spoon rests. By the time Catherine died in 1992, there were 95 spoon rests hanging on the wall.
Soon, the hobby became a way for Cassa to honor his wife, and to keep busy. And once that happened, friends and family always knew the perfect birthday gift for Cassa — a spoon rest from somewhere in the world.
“As crazy as it sounds, Grandpa decided to honor his love for my grandmother by continuing her collection of spoon rests,” Cassa’s granddaughter, Tracey Porpora, once wrote in a newspaper article about her grandparents’ unusual hobby.
Indeed, Cassa plans to inscribe “Guinness Book of World Record holder” on Catherine’s tombstone when he reaches 1,000 spoon rests.
“That’s the promise I made after she died, and I’m going to keep it,” he said.
Today, Cassa’s menagerie has every conceivable species of spoon rest, from fish-shaped to fruit-shaped, from glass and wood to ceramics, and yes, even plastic.
There are spoon rests bearing messages, like the one that says “Shhh, spoons resting.” Most bear the name of their reputed place of origin: Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Bulgaria, Santo Domingo, South Dakota, Iowa, and Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge, to name a few.
(“Ninety-nine percent of them were made in China,” he points out.)
There are even spoon rests made for more than one spoon, and, truth be told, spoon rests designed for a fork.
Cassa only has one spoon rest on his stovetop. It’s a marble-like version too dense to drill a hole through, with an inscription that reads, “I cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.”
Cassa regards his collection with a curator’s eye. Showing off his trove to a reporter last week, he flicked on the circular fluorescent light above the kitchen table to demonstrate the special glow it casts on his sub-collection of sparkly spoon-rests.
On the same wall is one of the many certificates Cassa has received from the Guinness people over the years. It reads: “Frank Cassa of Brooklyn, New York, USA, has a collection of 635 different spoon rests, which he amassed since the 1970s with the help of his late wife, Catherine Cassa.”
Cassa celebrated his 90th birthday a week ago — for which, of course, he was given more spoon rests. Soon, Cassa said, he’ll contact the Guinness Book of World Records to inform them that collection has topped 1,000.
“There’s no end to it.”
And here’s the kicker: He doesn’t even cook.
