NINE STEEL FORKS

NINE STEEL FORKS

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The above collected nine various steel fork designs are for everything from baked potatoes to ice cream, corn and bread. Thomas Coryat was an English writer. He is credited with introducing the table fork to England. 

Though the fork’s early history is obscure, the fork as a kitchen and dining utensil is believed by some to have originated perhaps in Ancient Greece.

Use of the fork spread slowly during the first millennium CE. Forks did not become common in North America until the 19th century.  Forks were being designed for nearly every type of food, and were considered necessary to every proper table. People in America dined with grace and forethought.

Forks had to be made and sold, then produced in versions that more and more people could afford, as they slowly ceased being merely unnecessary and became the mark of civilized behavior.

It is common knowledge that our own ancestors used to have very different and much cruder table manners.  We have progressed from the manners of the past.  We became modern and civilized. This sense of superiority does not prevent us from feeling proud, at the same time, of modern simplicity and lack of pomp.

Manners have indeed changed. They were developed into the system that we now conform to. Since manners are rituals and therefore conservative. They change slowly in the face of long and unwillingness. Even when a new way of doing things has been adopted by a powerful elite group. It may take decades, even centuries, for people generally to decide to follow suit.

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