17th century AD

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2001 by Peter Brown

Ritual and display on the dining room table has played on important part in the coolution of so-called polite society, with a great deal of attention given to how people eat in company! Prior to the sixteenth century it was rare for people to have utensils with which to place food in the their mouths, but as the century progressed personal cutlery became more available and its possession and proper use were recognized as important manifestations of the owner's wealth and a helpful guide to breeding and status. This article draws for the most part on a remarkable collection of mostly British cutlery amassed by Bill Brown over the last forty-five years. While the collection includes examples from Neolithic times to the present day, it is particularly strong in pieces made in the seventeenth century. In this essay I will discuss the pieces from that period, many of which are of exceptional quality made from a wide diversity of materials.

Considering the political instability of the seventeenth century in Britain, the illustrations show that British craftsmen were producing remarkable examples of the cutler's art. Fortunately, many of the high quality knives and forks they made have come down to us in excellent condition, which suggests their owners treated them as treasured heirlooms.

To qualify as a Freeman Cutler of London, it was necessary to train as a bladesmith and hafter, or handle maker, but once established, most cutlers probably purchased components from various sources. A number of cutlers working in England in the early seventeenth century had emigrated from the Netherlands and Germany during the Elizabethan period, which was a cause of some concern for the local trades. In order to maintain control and improve standards, starting in 1606 the Cutlers Company of London obliged every foreign cutler working in the city to strike his own mark on the blade and include the London dagger mark, [2] just as English freemen cutlers were required to do.

Britain gained immeasurably from the cross-fertilization of foreign ideas and craftsmanship, with the result that English cutlery of the period has a broadly European flavor to it. Thus the detailed, realistic tabletop still lifes for which Dutch painters were renowned in the seventeenth century can provide us with good indicators of what was available not only in the Netherlands but also in Britain at the time. Artists such as Clara Peeters, Gerrit Willemsz. Heda, and Pieter Claesz. offer us excellent documentation of the rich man's table, while Abraham de Pape, Lambert Doomer, Anthonie de Winter, and others concentrated on kitchens and simple country living. The still life by Claesz. in Plate I is typical of many of the former. [3] The handle of the knife is closely related to the ivory-handled example second from the left in Plate II. Clara Peeters's canvas of about 1610 (P1. IV) presents a more exotic display of seafood set on the newly fashionable Kraak porcelain, amongst brimming bowls of boiled eggs, quince jelly, and biscuits. A knife with a gilded and gem-encrusted handle sits precariously on the edge of the table as if fighting for the right to be present among all this wealth and importance. Interestingly, here as in many of these tabletop displays, there is usually only one knife, suggesting that knives were meant for communal use at this time and that issues of hygiene had not bee n properly thought through.

Spoons were more common; even peasants had their own spoons, and we can see in genre paintings that they often tucked their spoon into their hat for safe storage and ease of transportation. [4] Another method of keeping track of cutlery, particularly appropriate for large households, is illustrated in the painting by Anthonie de Winter shown in Plate VIII, where each trifid-ended spoon is allocated its own slot on the shelf of the dresser.

Personal forks do not appear in Dutch paintings of interiors before the 1660s, although the French engraver Abraham Bosse (1692-1676) recorded them in use at Fontainebleau in l633. [5] In Elizabethan England personal forks were rare even in royal households. [6] Food was generally carried to the mouth on the blade of a knife. Decoration was focused on the handle, which was often made of such materials as carved ivory, amber, cast bronze, or silver with gold inlay A popular decorative technique for bone and ivory handles was so-called chip carving, which was sometimes stained green using a copper solution.

During the reign of Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) it became popular to have knives in pairs, housed in an elaborately decorated sheath that was worm as a fashion accessory. The pair shown in Plate V was made by Henry Stanus of London in 1606. The knives have long solid bolsters typical of the period, decorated with gilt damascened flowers and foliage, and short half handles of rock crystal, a material prized by most cultures since ancient times. The stumpwork sheath, embellished with gilt wire and seed pearls but missing the cord that attached it to the owner's girdle, has a central design of an interlacing knot, a motif symbolizing love and bonding.[7] The decoration perhaps refers to the fact that such elegant pairs of knives are often referred to as wedding knives, and they were popular gifts for the bridal trousseau. This practice started in England during the reign of Henry VIII but had longer traditions in the rest of Europe. Marriage contracts from mid-fourteenth-century Germany for example, record the "at testation of knife," a practice that originated in the presentation of a knife when purchasing property. [8]