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| Were this knife and fork for a child? Or for tea? – “As the family service increased in complexity, these smaller versions of the knife, the fork, and the spoon sometimes assumed dual roles in the catalogs and price lists of the silver firms, for, with no additional investment in dies, a separate listing enabled the manufacturer to increase the number of pieces he offered. Thus the child-size spoon was sometimes listed also as a "Five o'Clock Tea," an "Egg Spoon," Or an "English Tea"; the child's fork as a "Tea Fork," "Beef Fork," or "Fruit Fork"; and the knife with a flat, solid handle as a "Tea Knife" as well as a juvenile piece.” |
"Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth" has been a common explanation for uneven economic progress ever since Miguel de Cervantes wrote the line in Don Quixote in the 15th century, but it was left to the mid-Victorian silver manufacturers to reduce the statement to a mathematical formula. In an advertisement featuring Sterling Birthday Spoons, addressed to the jewelry trade at the turn of the century, R. Wallace & Son pointed out that "6000 babies are born each day-15% get silver spoons at birth."
Silverware for children was not new to America; in a will dated April 18, 1726, the Reverend Timothy Stevens of Glastonbury, Connecticut, bequeathed "...to my son Joseph . .. three silver spoons, one of them to be a small or babe spoon, as it is called," and to his son Benjamin, among other things, three silver spoons, one of them to be a child's spoon.
"But it was only after the mid-1800s that plated and solid silver became common for the perambulator-to-prep-school set. Practically every manufacturer has made "Child's Sets" in all of the standard silverware patterns. Consisting, at first, of a small knife, fork, and spoon, the sets were available in almost every price range after the late 1860s. Some were elaborately packaged in satin-lined boxes; the less expensive plated sets were often mounted on lithographed cards, the cards themselves rivaling early Valentines in elaborate depictions of decorous childhood.
By the 1880s, a cup or mug, and a matching napkin ring, had been added to many of these sets, and it was an under-privileged child who had not received his own silverware by the time he joined the rest of the family at the dinner table. As the family service increased in complexity, these smaller versions of the knife, the fork, and the spoon sometimes assumed dual roles in the catalogs and price lists of the silver firms, for, with no additional investment in dies, a separate listing enabled the manufacturer to increase the number of pieces he offered. Thus the child-size spoon was sometimes listed also as a "Five o'Clock Tea," an "Egg Spoon," Or an "English Tea"; the child's fork as a "Tea Fork," "Beef Fork," or "Fruit Fork"; and the knife with a flat, solid handle as a "Tea Knife" as well as a juvenile piece.
In the electroplated lines of better quality, a choice of a solid-handle knife or one with a hollow handle was usually offered; in the solid-silver lines, the hollow-handle knife was generally standard, although sets in which a flat-handled knife was mated with a small fork and spoon were offered by some companies. – American Silver Flatware 1837-1910, Noel D. Turner
🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia
