cutlery
Cutlery
The term cutlery usually refers to eating implements such as knives forks and spoons although it also covers utensils used for the serving and preparation of food. In the United States the terms silverware flatware and cutlery are used interchangeably. Traditionally silver has been the metal of choice for more expensive items with steel and other alloys such as pewter being used in cheaper implements. Plastic disposable cutlery has been with us for some time but a more recent development is biodegradable version made of a starch-polyester material.
During the fourteenth century and medieval times, the English kept their eating utensils on their person. The medieval individual’s travelling set usually consisted of a knife a spoon and a spike. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that the knife fork and spoon that we are familiar came into use. Renaissance Italy and then France were the first countries to introduce the idea of matching knives forks and spoons for all who were eating together. Forks did not suddenly appear with a full compliment of prongs but gained them one at a time with the final fourth one appearing in the mid eighteenth century. Knives became smaller during this period. Originally they were much larger than the other pieces of cutlery that made up the set.
The most important city from a cutlery perspective is probably Sheffield in Yorkshire, England. Sheffield was ideally situated as it had an excellent water supply and locally available iron ore and coal. Sheffield has been producing cutlery for around 800 years and flourished from the fifteenth century through to the nineteenth. Many industry changing inventions and procedures in the cutlery manufacturing process originated in Sheffield. Stainless steel in the early twentieth century and electroplating by means of electrolysis in the nineteenth are just two important examples.