YES!!! Its fantastic fun and you get the very best photos from letting them experiment. My daughter is 15.5 months and she feeds herself 90% of the time now and we have some amazing photos of her covered in yoghurt and all sorts of disgusting muck. Bonus is you egt to eat all your food at the same time, without having to concentrate on child at same time. She has also mastered a fork recently, lots of mess but fanatsic fun.
Tips: dont bother with the suction, just be close and away, I thought I was safe with suction until she worked out how to unsticky the bowl when I was the other side of the kitchen!
Dishclothes or something all over highchair, plastic mat on floor
Dont give food the spoon can get stuck in. We gave DD couscous which was a bit sticky. Cue the spoon getting stuck and food being catapulted across the kitchen
Strip the child first, then you can just dump them in the shower if necessary.
Small pasta pieces, rice, couscous, risotto, yoghurt etc are good to start with.
Dont worry about the mess or table manners, just watch and enjoy (from behind a plastic screen!!)
We usually have bread/cheese/fruit for lunch, that means we can take it out easily if we are out for lunch and we save the messy meal for the evening meal, because picking grains of couscous out of DD's hair when I want to get out and get to playgroup in the afternoon is not my idea of fun.