what are these utensils?

[eleventh]

here are 3 pieces of Tiffany & Co "Japanese."

What are the purposes of these forks?



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[admin]

I may well be wrong, but I suspect the purpose, through later alterations, was to turn ordinary dinner forks into something more interesting.

Regards, Tom
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[dragonflywink]

They look like recently modified pieces to me too. The first is usually labelled as a baked potato fork, the second one made into perhaps a too-large two-tine butter pick, and the third, umm - maybe some sort weird beef fork or a too-short lettuce fork? The pieces appear to be the original Japanese too, rather than the later Audubon - always bothers me to see the nice old patterns altered like this.

~Cheryl
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[eleventh]

you are both probably right.

all 3 of these forks are 8", the same length as a dinner fork.
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[JLDoggett]

They do appear to have been altered, the edging around the inside of the heel has been removed in item 2. The forms they are trying to replicate are, #2 an olive fork and #3 a lemon fork. I have seen roeks similar to #1 labled as potato or sausage servers.
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[dragonflywink]

Osterberg's Sterling Silver Flatware for Dining Elegance shows both the first (with tines curved out slightly and twisted) and second made-up pieces as baked potato forks, and does note that a Chantilly catalog from the turn of the century shows a two-tined potato serving fork, with a 1911 catalog calling it a baked potato/sandwich fork - can't say that I've ever seen any that look like factory production, but with his specific notations, will trust that information. He also states, "Currently these forks are being made by some silver dealers from luncheon, place or dinner forks and called English meat forks (with the outside tines turned out and twisted and the center tines removed) or baked potato forks (with the tines turned out but not twisted, and also with the extra tines removed)." On the third piece, don't believe that an 8" long piece was intended to be marketed as a lemon fork - seems more likely to be intended as a lettuce fork, though differing from the long slender handled and rather elegant three-tined original designs.

There seems to be a rather large business in these made-up pieces, with some of the matching services offering a huge variety of "hand-crafted" items, not to mention the numerous independent dealers producing alterations of varying quality, usually noted as modified pieces. The problem is, once they hit a secondary market, they're often sold as "rare" or "unique" pieces.

~Cheryl
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