FIG. 18.—HANDSOMELY DECORATED KNIFE CASE AND CONTENTS.
(In the Victoria and Albert Museum.)
Cutlery: Knives, Forks, and Spoons.
The term "cutlery," derived from coutellerie, the French for cutlery, had been evolved from culter, the Latin for knife. Primarily it referred to cutting instruments, and especially to knives, but in a general way, when speaking of table cutlery, spoons and forks may appropriately be included. Early records referring to cutlery indiscriminately use the terms knives and swords; indeed, the arms granted to the London Cutlers' Company in the sixteenth year of the reign of Edward IV are two swords, crossed; later a crest, consisting of an elephant bearing a castle, was added. Homer tells us of knives carried at the girdle in his day, and describes them as of triangular form. The Anglo-Saxons and the Normans carried about with them met-soex or eating knives, but it was not until the end of the fifteenth century that knives were used at table, other than those which were carried at the girdle, every man using his own cutlery. In England, Sheffield was early noted for the manufacture of knives, for Chaucer tells us, "A Scheffeld thwitel bare he in his hose." Another form of spelling the word which denoted knife was troytel, and from these terms is derived "whittle." The jack knife came in in the days of James I, after whom it was named, the original term being Jacques-te-leg, these knives shutting into a groove or handle without spring or lock.
The making of a table knife even in early times necessitated the work of many hands, for taking part in its production were the smiths who forged it, the bladers who made the blade out of the metal already hammered, and the haft-makers. When the knife was complete it was handed to the sheath-makers, who fashioned the sheath of leather, and sometimes encased it in metal. The host did not provide table cutlery for his guests until the reign of Elizabeth. In earlier times it was left to the traveller to provide himself with whatever he deemed necessary; thus it is recorded that when Henry VI made a tour in the north he carried with him knife, fork, and spoon, as it was stated "he scarcely expected to find any at the houses of the nobility." From that custom, no doubt, arose the common practice of fitting separate sets, and afterwards sets for more than one person, in cases, the materials used being for many years the beautifully embossed cuir boulli leather work. Queen Elizabeth carried her knife and other appointments at her girdle, a custom followed by her ladies; although it is said that at the Court of the virgin queen it was customary for the gentlemen courtiers to cut up the meat on the platters of the fair ones with whom they were dining; the ladies at that time being content to prove the truth of the adage, "Fingers were made before forks."
Collectors soon realize that there were many forms of knives even amongst those specially reserved for table use. Both blades and handles have passed through many stages in the gradual evolution from the hunting knife to the cutlery on the modern dinner table. The blades have been narrow and pointed like daggers, and they have been scimitar-shaped, and rounded off at the point. The qualities of the material have changed, too, Sheffield cutlers and those of other places vying with one another. The cutlery trade has long drifted north, although at one time the members of the London Cutlers' Company were proud of the quality of their goods, and boasted of their knives being "London made, haft and blade." This ancient Guild tried hard to maintain their pre-eminence, and in the days of Elizabeth obtained a Charter prohibiting all strangers from bringing any knives into England from beyond the seas.
The carving knife seems to have had a separate descent from the large hunting knives used to cut up barons of beef, roasted oxen, and portions which were cut off the joint for each individual or for several persons.
Forks for table use were a much later invention, although there were larger meat forks, flesh forks, and heavier iron kitchen appliances (see Chapter [V]).
In very early times small forks, of which there are some in the Guildhall Museum dating from Roman and Saxon times, were chiefly used for fruit. The use of forks at table, for meat, is attributed to the invention of an Italian, and the custom thus started rapidly spread "in good society" on the Continent of Europe. Thomas Coryate, a noted traveller, is said to have introduced them into Germany, and afterwards into England, where their use was at first much ridiculed as effeminate, the "fork-carving" traveller being spoken of in contempt.
Forks were in regular use in England early in the sixteenth century. Dean Stanley, in his Memorials of Westminster Abbey, quotes from the Chapter Book of 1554, in which it is stated by Dean Weston (1553-6) that the College dinners "became somewhat disorderly, forks and knives were tossed freely to and fro." The old table forks were two-pronged, the prongs being long and set near together; the steel forks of the early nineteenth century were three-pronged, and another prong was added later, the latter form being adapted by the makers of silver forks in more recent years.
In Fig. [18] is shown a very handsome knife case and its contents, which are to be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In Fig. [19] another example of a set of knife, fork, and spoon in the same collection is illustrated.