Large Potato Fork? Emmanuel Levy ca. 1815?

[JPK]

Hi: I'm testing my research and hope someone will confirm.
Is it indeed a potato fork and is the "EM" for Emmanuel Levy.

Thank You for your posts,
Jim


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[celadon]

Hi Jim

You are indeed correct with the maker, Emmanuel Levy - EL. The fork was assayed at Exeter 1816-1817. Between the maker's (rather, the sponsor's mark) and the Lion Passant you can see the remnants of the duty mark.

I am not sure what the fork is used for, but potatoes would make sense. Someone with more fork knowledge should be able to answer that question.

Keith
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[JPK]

Thanks for the confirmation Keith....
Jim
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[georgiansilver]

To be frank, I have never heard of a potato fork other than the garden implement used to dig for potatoes. I believe you have an ordinary fork which has had the tines splayed for toast making over the fire as was done in Victorian times.... Best wishes, Mike.
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[dognose]

Hi Jim,

Agree with Mike, whilst specialist pieces appeared later in that century, especially in the American market, I feel that such an item would have been unknown to the people of Exeter in 1816.

A Victorian conversion for toasting? I would say Mike was spot on.

Regards Trev.
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[Qrt.S]

Interesting to read that you have never heard of potato forks. Please let me show you a set. The potato fork is used in the Baltic countries, Russia and in Finland as well as in parts of central Europe. The flat one is from Netherlands and the one above the flat one is from Finland. The two left are Russian. They are all from 1920-30. It is strange but this kind of fork in not known in the other Scandinavian countries.


Now I run out of topic, sorry, Anyway, to my mind JPK's fork is at rather typical toast fork, but never at potato fork.
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[JLDoggett]

I would hazzard the guess that it was used for lifting and serving. Most likely something in a creme sauce or oil, IE. sardines, herring or possibly tomatos. If you speared something with those tines, the angle of the outer ones would do more shreading than securing as they entered. As it predates most food specific serving pieces I suspect it was altered to fill a specific need for a household and appears that if bent back into shap would be a stand dinner fork with all the tines of equal length.

Over the years I have seen several pieces of flatware that have been altered in various ways to make them more useful. Round the bowl of a tablespoon and rebent the shank to form a gravy ladle (sometimes done by less-than-honest dealers to re-make a damaged spoon into a more valueable piece), curl the handle of a fork and/or spoon for ease in use by someone who is disabled or arthriritic and you have something that looks like a later child's set, but far too big to fit a child'mouth. Quite often these pieces were remade after their altered use was over, but sometimes not.

Finding one of these pieces today can be quite a quandery. Because we may never know why the original piece was altered I usually attempt to restore them to their origional use.
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[Qrt.S]

No, you don't spear something, but you more likely lift and serve with the fork. It could be a fish serving fork.

However, I also recall having seen baked potatoes served with a very similar fork but only with two tines.

At least its size fits these suggestions even if they are only guesses.
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