Talk about a great club!! Everything about this circa 1835 middle spoon is not only original, crafted, and configured in the St Andrews shop of Hugh Philp, it is in outstanding condition. Even all the whipping on the neck and both the top and bottom of the grip is original. Plus the head is golden blonde and without blemish much like it was when it left Philp's hands. 

The head on this middle spoon is well lofted, more than a long spoon, and its 42" shaft is longer than most middle spoons. Such a long shaft on a middle spoon often indicates that the club is old.  Furthermore, the lower portion of the shaft is exquisitely thin and delicate. Shafts were never made like this after the unforgivingly hard gutty ball was born. (Clubmakers saw the damage that gutty's inflicted on wood clubs, so they quickly beefed up the necks and shafts.)

The neck is extremely slender and the lines of the club are as sleek and graceful as can be. The shape of the head, which measure 5 3/4" in length, 2 1/8" in width, and 1 1/16" in face depth, exudes elegance. The shallow, curved face is textbook Philp. About the only "flaw" on this club is the horn has a few tiny chips along the leading edge, and they are of no significance. 

Hugh Philp was born in 1783 and died in 1856.  In 1819 he was appointed the official clubmaker to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. He set up his shop next to the 18th hole of the Old Course (which shop Tom Morris eventually took over and used). Philp's reputation as an outstanding clubmaker was quickly established, and he became renown for his work during his lifetime. His penchant for being meticulous was legendary. His clubs were the gold standard.

in 1897, Harper's Weekly published the following comments about Hugh Philp: "It was Hugh Philp who first departed from these primitive models of the stone age and began to make golf clubs that looked as though they were intended for some gentler work than the crushing in of an enemy's skull or the manufacture of broken flint for road-building. Philp had an eye for graceful lines and curves, and his slim, elegant models remain to-day things of beauty, though their usefulness has long since departed…. The few specimens that sill exist are acknowledged 'old masters' and are only to be exchanged against much fine gold." (Harper's Weekly, October, 2, 1897)

Decades after his death, Golf Illustrated acknowledged Philp's continuing reputation as the finest clubmaker the game had ever seen: "The Prince of putter makers, by common consent, was Hugh Philp, who flourished at St. Andrews more than 50 years ago. This genius made such beautiful and perfect wooden putters that he has come to be regarded as the Amati or Stradivarious of Golf, and a genuine 'Philp' to-day is worth untold gold. The long narrow faces of these clubs and their perfect balance are well known to connoisseurs." (Golf Illustrated, Oct. 6, 1900)

Consider the words from an 1859 Chambers Journal article titled Hugh Philp The Master:  Could the past be relived, you might enter Hugh's shop with me; as it is, do so in fancy. It is not a very commodious habitation, being a small square box erected on the convenient brink of the course at the commencement of the links....Hugh himself is polishing and stamping his name on some clubheads.  For many and many a year to come these letters which he is branding on the clubs will serve for Hugh's best epitaph, and golfer's yet to be will sigh for the "touch of that vanished hand."

This club demonstrates with great clarity why Hugh Philp has long been considered the "Stradivarius of Golf," and why Philp's work is still considered the pinnacle of the clubmaker's art. 

For more on Hugh Philp, see TCA2 v1 p54-58