Centuries ago in Wales, the young lover would also give gifts of sweets or cakes; but they would also give a special, more personal gift to the object of their desire, the Welsh Love Spoon. Some of the early love spoons can be seen on display at the Welsh Folk Museum in Cardiff. There is even one that dates back to 1667. The young man would spend hours carving the lovespoon with his own hands, in the hope that the girl would accept it. If the girl accepted the spoon, she would demonstrate her interest in him and they would commence on a relationship, which is the origin of the word 'spooning'.

His favorite example to illustrate thecontingency of this process is Nicholas of Cusa’s spoon-maker (the corre-sponding note card would have been struck through in red many times). In1450, he draws his self-esteem from his technical creation, the carved-woodspoon. The spoon is a genuinely creative product in that it does not have aprecedent in nature—but making the spoon is a creative process only inimitation of divine creativity.