Vintage Forks and other fun flatware

[artemisdart]

I was glancing through a recent issue of "Real Simple" while in a doctor's waiting room recently, and found myself staring at a full-page spread of vintage forks with specialized uses. Lemon forks, pickle forks, oyster forks, fruit forks -- forks of all kinds. Forks I'd never seen before.

And then today's Miss Manners column contains the acerbic commentary:

"[I]t is unfortunately true that there was a nasty time during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution when guessing the uses of peculiar flatware served as an entrance test for moving up into the middle class.

This is no longer the case. The table has become simplified, to put it delicately -- possibly because so few people sit at it. But the sting of the old days has a peculiar afterlife. People still speak with mysterious pride of "not knowing which fork to use" as if nearly all those specialized Victorian pieces hadn't been melted down to finance World War I, and now they would be lucky to get a metal fork instead of a plastic one."

Intrigued, today I Googled "vintage flatware," and found a vast panoply of specialized, archaic forks, knives, spoons, and other paraphernalia from SilverQueen in Florida.

I'm used to seeing some of these. Tongs? Sure. An ice scoop? Not unusual. The cheese graters, the cheese plane, the gravy ladles and punch ladles and butter knives and suchlike implements are all familiar to me. I own a sugar spoon or two.

But ah, the other exotic things on this page. Check it out!

In "forks," we have the Individual Fish Fork, the Cocktail / Shrimp Fork, the Ramekin Fork ("For those puddings & Desserts that need a little help coming out of the bowl"), the unnaturally elongated Individual Strawberry / Fruit Fork, the Olive / Pickle Fork, and the Baked Potato Serving Fork ("Also great for holding down a cheese ball on your buffet").

In "spoons," there is the Bouillon Soup Spoon, the Gumbo Spoon, the tall and delicate Iced Beverage Spoon, the Salt Spoon (a tiny, cute little scoop!), the Berry Serving Spoon, the Relish Scoop, the Olive Spoon, and the Cracker Scoop, which looks suspiciously like an oversized Sugar Spoon.

And an entire new class of flatware to me -- the Server. Pierced servers for tomatoes; small servers for bon bon nuts; a slightly concave, pointed server just for jelly. Ornately pierced servers for jelly roll cakes, hooded servers for asparagus or petit fours, servers for spaghetti, waffles, sardines, potatoes, or pâté.

I had no idea there was such a thing as an angel food cake breaker. That would come in very handy for times I find myself compressing the angel food cake with the unwarranted force of the knife, when all it really needs is a very long, very fine, sterling silver comb to part its delicate structure like the Red Sea.

Also on display: The lobster pick! The butter / nut pick, which I totally want! An individual corn butterer!

It's all too much. I need to lie down and have a cold drink, which I will make and then stir only with the appropriate, Victorian-era sterling silver implements.

Comments

flatware!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm familiar with SilverQueen. We get blast-emails from them about our china patterns (my silver pattern is complete) from our wedding registry. It's nice to know I can still get stuff, even though it's discontinued. That is, if I can find the money for it, ha! -csch

[echsdoc.livejournal.com]

Did you see the news item of the solid gold and teeny-tiny combination ear pick and earwax spoon? Found in a wreck in the Caribbean. From centuries ago. Expected to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.

If one of your arcane utensils is an earwax spoon, hang onto it. (On your table the earwax spoon goes next to the black olive tongs.)

[catherinew.livejournal.com]

I did not see the news of the earwax scoop. Of a certainty, Gmail is not feeding me the correct news items.