Meissen fork handle
date: label: date made
content: ca 1730-1735
label: date made
content: 1730-1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen fork handle
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: L. 3¼" 8.3cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Fork
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
label: Description
content: Industry and Manufacturing
label: Description
content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
label: Description
content: ID NUMBER: 1984.1140.25
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 706
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: None
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: H. Bachrach, London, 1947.
label: Description
content: This fork with a Meissen porcelain handle is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
label: Description
content: The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
label: Description
content: The fork handle is painted with an animal on each side, a fox-like creature of invention, of which there are many in Japanese mythology and folklore.
label: Description
content: While the knife has an ancient history as a tool for butchering and cutting food, the table fork is a much later invention. Large two-pronged forks existed in antiquity to assist in the handling of large cuts of meat, but the custom of using a small fork for dining appeared in the cultures of the Middle East and Byzantium in the seventh century AD. When introduced to Venice in the tenth century by a Byzantine bride at her wedding feast to the Doge’s son, the Venetian court considered the implement a decadent affectation. Nevertheless, forks were adopted slowly in Italy and spread to other parts of Europe reaching England with the traveler Thomas Coryote in the early seventeenth century. Forks arrived with European settlers at a later date in the American colonies, but their use was not wholeheartedly accepted even in the early 1800s.
label: Description
content: The tines on this fork are in the early style and best used as an aid in cutting meat. Forks with two shorter tines (suckett forks) were used for eating sugary and sticky sweetmeats or foods like mulberries that would stain the fingers. Three or four tines formed into a curve made eating other foods (peas for example) very much easier.
label: Description
content: For histories of the fork see http://leitesculinaria.com/1157/writings-the-uncommon-origins-of-the-common-fork.html
label: Description
content: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/2009/07/a-history-of-western-eating-utensils-from-the-scandalous-fork-to-the-incredible-spork/
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, Jefferson Miller II, J., Rainer Rückert., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 218-219.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Saxony, Meissen
topic: label: Subject
content: Manufacturing
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
label: See more items in
content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
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content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1984.1140.25
label: catalog number
content: 1984.1140.25
label: accession number
content: 1984.1140
label: collector/donor number
content: 706
objectType: label: Object Name
content: fork
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: beasts of fable (Fabeltier) (overall style)
label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: handle: 3 1/4 in; 8.255 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5/8 in x 7 5/16 in x 3/4 in; 1.5875 cm x 18.6055 cm x 1.905 cm