Fork

Date1698-1699

Artist/Maker John Brooke

MediumSilver

DimensionsL: 7 13/32".

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1971-239

DescriptionforkLabel TextKnives and spoons have long been standard eating implements. Even though forks for specialized purposes were used at an early date, they were not generally adopted for individual table use in England until the second half of the seventeenth century. The majority of early silver forks were made in one piece, their handles based on those of contemporary spoons. The earliest known English silver table fork is that of 1632/33 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Engraved with the crests of the earl of Rutland, it has a handle of notched-end Puritan type and two tines. The only other recorded English fork of this pattern is one with London hallmarks of 1683/84, engraved with the crest of Charles, earl of Dorset, formerly in the collection of Charles G. Rupert of Wilmington, Delaware. French examples have survived in greater number.

The number of tines on a fork does not follow a chronological sequence. Silver forks of trefid type with two, three, and four tines appear in the reign of Charles II. The earliest recorded four-tined examples are of trefid form and date from 1674/75. Five years earlier, Madame Prujean had purchased "12 Four Tyned Forks weighing xxxiii ounces ii dwt at V' 11d ounce." After 1760 the use of four tines did become fairly standard on silver forks, though two or three tines remained customary on hafted forks with steel tines.

The shank and tines of this fork are extremely heavy. The outer tines, as on most seventeenth-century examples with three or four tines, incline inward. The shoulders of the lower or tined section and the short intervals between the tines are characteristically less angular than on trefid forks before about 1690.Inscription(s)Unidentified arms engraved on underside of handleMark(s)Fully marked on underside of handle.ProvenanceWilliam Bruford & Son, Ltd., Exeter (1944)
Vendor" How (of Edinburgh), London