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Hi Guys
Forgive my lack of social knowledge. What are these 3 french items for? The fork is like nothing I've seen before. Spoon has holes in.
French Minerva mark - makers mark in Lozenge is just a capital L. Would anyone have any information as to there use, and when approximately they were made.
Cheers
Gary
Hello Gary
Here is an initial response to your questions.
These items are from an hors d’oeuvre service, dating to the 19th C. I could give you more precision for the date if you could provide a clear image of the maker’s mark.
The knife would be used to serve pâté, the pierced spoon anything in brine or sauce such as olives or mushrooms, and the fork for cold meats such as ham or salami.
A hors d'oeuvres service normally consists of four pieces, not three. A flat openwork spatula is missing from yours. These services were popular towards the end of the 19th century and continued until the 1930s. The handles are frequently hollow with a wax filling, and the blades and spoon parts are of silver or gold-plated base metal. Each such service only contains a dozen or so grams of silver, though solid silver services can of course be found.
If you use this search term, you'll find many photos of these services : service hors d'oeuvre argent
Yes, although hors d’oeuvre services usually have 4 servers presented as a boxed set, 19th C manufacturer’s catalogues offer up to 9 different piece types for serving hors d’oeuvre. David Allan illustrates several sets with 6-9 pieces.
The first servers appeared after 1840, and were standard from the 1870’s to about 1900. Today Puiforcat still makes 4 hors d’oeuvre servers in the Élysée pattern, that they call cocktail servers, available individually.
If your pieces aren’t marked on the business ends with a Minerva head and a maker’s mark, then they are silver plated, with only the hollow handles in 950 standard silver.
See:
Vaughn, Kathryn. “For a good start: French hors d’oeuvre and their silver servers.”
Silver Society of Canada Journal, vol. 14, 2011, pp. 48-58.
Allan, David. Le couvert et la coutellerie de table française du XIXe siècle. Dijon, Éditions Faton, 2007.
Robuchon, Joel, ed. Le grand Larousse Gastronomique, Paris, Éditions Larousse, 2007.
However the utensils in question are serving pieces, not individual place pieces. They would be presented on a serving dish, so the diner would not have to guess what fork to use!
