Etiquette of Servants and Skewers

Swift, in his “Advice to Servants,” bade them “send up the meat well stuck with skewers to make it look round and plump.”

For centuries slender wooden skewers or skivers were used to fasten meat to the revolving spit and to preserve the shape of the joint while it was cooked. These giant pointed pins were cut from dogwood until about 1680, when lignum vitae began to be used. Handles were usually elaborately carved to facilitate removal from the meat. Swift, in his Advice to Servants, bade them "send up the meat well stuck with skewers to make it look round and plump." 

A mid-eighteenth century refinement was the introduction of silver skewers for this purpose. Wooden skewers held the meat while it was on the spit or in the oven, but, before serving, these were replaced by silver ones. Silver skewers were made in sets of varying lengths. The smaller, six or seven inches long, were used for game and small joints of meat. Skewers eleven to fifteen inches long were for larger joints. Such a skewer, thrust through the meat on the dish, offered a projecting top which served as a handle to aid the carver.

The earliest silver skewers, dating from the 1730s, were cut from flat plate. In shape, this design resembled a bodkin, with the faces of the blade flat and terminating in an elongated oval eye, soldered on, which aided its withdrawal from the meat. Such skewers are very scarce. By 1760 the oval loop terminal soldered to the blade might be moulded with a shell decoration. After about 1765 the blade was chamfered or bevelled, and this and the circular loop were cast as a single entity. From 1770 the skewer might be die struck with a decorative end, such as the shell and thread design, matching forks and spoons of the period.

A skewer was usually hallmarked close to the loop where the metal was about one-quarter of an inch thick. A crest might be engraved on the reverse. Counterfeiters have been known to transpose these marks to other articles of silver or to convert the silver into some more valuable article. — From “1500-1820 Three Centuries of English Domestic Silver,” Bernard & Therle Hughes, 1968

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