Cutlery is a clear symptom of (lack of) social belonging if it is used inappropriately. Placed on the plate in a certain way, it gives the waiters unequivocal signals about our appetite and the enjoyment of eaten dishes. At the table, it should be laid out according to a real etiquette. However, we do not care about it, preferring a casual table setting that rewards closeness and conviviality by sacrificing the etiquette itself.
The essentials: 20 cutlery sets that made design history
Extensions of our hands, they embody an etiquette that imposes rules on the use closely linked to social norms. Between continuity and experimentation with shapes and types, a selection of unmissable and iconic cutlery sets.
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- Giulia Zappa
- 16 January 2022
Therefore, a great ritual envelops this everyday object, which in its most baroque expressions mobilises an almost perverse propensity for specialization. The hugest cutlery sets reach up to 18 pieces, even though they are used in a restricted and generic form, generally limited to just three pieces, in “real” life.
Despite all these rules, the use of cutlery is a fairly recent habit, especially the fork. Appeared just before the year 1000 and banned by Pope Innocent III as a lust, it became established in Italy from the 14th century onwards, before crossing over to France through Catherine de’ Medici. The nobility, even the Sun King, preferred to eat food with their hands, refusing the use of a tool that imposed controlled gestures and seemed to distance them from a more immediate and carnal relationship with food.
In recent years, the trend in tableware has become increasingly spontaneous and light, more sensitive to quality than to the number of pieces on display. The indestructible and easy to clean steel has replaced silver as the material of choice for tables all over the world. The cult of the democratisation of everyday life has imposed itself as an inclination to “good form”, while having fun experimenting with unexpected morphologies or embracing new sustainable materials capable of adapting to a use of cutlery that does not necessarily require the compresence of the table.
A purchase we make in a thoughtful way, cutlery is a long-lasting and, at least in the Western world, indispensable part of our everyday lives. In a world obsessed with the prominence of food, not even the most innovative forms of food design, or the new packaging of food delivery, or even the bad habits of a meal emptied of sociality by confinement, seem destined to deprive us of their role as partners and mediators.
Opening image: Fjord Teak Flatware, Jens Quistgaard, Dansk International Designs, 1953
There was a time, long gone for many, when the cutlery of the rich (and not only) was made of sterling silver. The French maison Christofle is one of the companies that have preserved this taste for the table with its old models still in the catalogue. Repeated in countless copies, a good example is the Marly, a classic among classics, which is distinguished by the vegetal decoration of its handles.
The pompous, richly decorated lines of nineteenth-century cutlery services came to a stop with this one, an expression of Wiener Werkstätte’s taste and presented in the exhibition “Der gedeckte Tisch” (Vienna, 1906). The elongated and slightly flared handle and the flattened shape of the spoon define its style. Since 2000, the service has been reproposed in steel by Alessi, while the original version was made of silver.
Having lost its baroque style, the handles of the Bernadotte service are decorated with vertical lines, enhancing the graphic lines of each piece. They were signed by the Swedish royal and, after his abdication, industrial designer Sigvard Bernadotte, the perfect embodiment of a possible synthesis between aristocratic taste and everyday casualness.
A carved wooden handle, defined by essential lines that enhance the grain, characterises this famous service created by the artist and designer Jens Quistgaard. After being noticed at the Arts&Crafts museum in Copenhagen, Fjord will be marketed in the United States under the Dansk International Designs brand, achieving great commercial success.
A famous cutlery service by Ponti, it is also one of his most radical and distinctive designs for the table. What makes it different from other works of more classicist inspiration is the asymmetry of the joint with the handle and its triangular shape. Great attention is also paid to the full functionality of the design: from the short knife blade to the short-toothed fork and the large shape of the spoon.
Very short fork tines, an ergonomic line of support for the index finger on the knife whose blade is – instead of the more usual cutlery – thinner than the handle. And again, a handle completely integrated into the cutlery, made from a single piece of metal. The service, a great classic of Scandinavian design which for once the adjective iconic is not wasted for, was made for the SAS Royal Hotel – Jacobsen’s total creation – along with other products that have made industrial design history and imagination, including the Egg Chair.
A purist cutlery, but firmly rooted in everyday use, Mono-A by German designer Peter Raacke elevates the ambition to design normal objects to a formal value, an emblem of democratic design also by virtue of the transversality and popularity of the style. A long-lived product, and still marketed by the original manufacturer, Mono-A has been enriched over time by the Mono-T and Mono-E lines, with riveted teak and ebony handles respectively.
One of the emblems of the Scandinavian table, it combines rigour and freedom of line in an original way, which is particularly visible in the volume of the knife, animated by a 90-degree twist.
Stainless steel service designed for everyday use. It stands out for the sinuous essentiality of its shape, often defined as a successful synthesis of Western functionality and Eastern sense of proportion. Also available with a black handle.
The uniqueness of this service is not only in its shape, but also in the fact that it can be stored and displayed. The original perforated circle at the end of the handle allows the cutlery to be stored not only in a drawer, but also in a special visible holder on the kitchen worktop.
Thanks to this cutlery, the young Iacchetti and Ragni won a Compasso d’Oro in 2001. It interprets a real zeitgeist of the beginning of the millennium: biodegradable – it is in fact made of Mater-Bi – it merges the spoon with the fork in a versatile tool designed for informal use that crowns an Italian export ritual: the aperitif.
Set in 18/10 stainless steel, Cinque Stelle plays with the proportion of thicknesses to evoke the simplicity of basic, familiar forms, to be enhanced by an unexpected detail, the soft choker at the end of the handle.
Sculptural service in 18/10 and 13/10 steel. It stands out for its central vein that enhances the volume through expressive plays of light. Other details: prongs that are easy to clean, and a blade that does not touch the tablecloth, making the use of a knife rest unnecessary.
Betting on the synaesthetic effect, Korean designer Jinhyun Jeon rethinks the shape of spoons, using ceramic as the material of choice and stimulating new points of contact with the lips, palate and tongue. Will a different shape be enough to stimulate a new perception of taste?
The small brand Jouw – founded by Dutchmen Jouw Wijnsma and Martin Kullik – does not take table ergonomics seriously, and enjoys subverting all rules for the use of plates and cutlery. An irreverence that bears its fruit and which, thanks to irony, allows us to question the acquired behaviours around the rituals of conviviality.
Portuguese designer Miguel Flores Soeiro is not the first to play with the twisting of the handle, but he is the one who seems to have taken the concept to extremes. The result is a particularly high handle that rises above the surface of the table and imposes a different grip on the fingers.
Small details distinguish an apparently sober service that takes its name from the elongated graft – hence the neck, precisely – between the handle and the functional part of the cutlery: the knife blade is shaped as a paddle, while the spoon approaches the shape of a circle.
With a primitivist touch, Maarten Baas consolidates his taste for asymmetrical and irregular shapes also through this new collaboration with the brand Valerie Objects. The result makes use of irony to surprise and offer a touch of lightness: the blade resembles a saw; the edge of the spoon is irregular while the prongs escape the taste for parallel lines.
Begun with a potato peeler and continued with an entire table service, Starck’s collaboration with Degrenne delivers us a cutlery set that stands out for its curious cylindrical handle that, as if it were a fern, facets to re-join at the end of the cutlery. Two versions are available, from the one in 18/10 steel to the one with the ABS handle.
Few design studios manage to rethink the shapes of objects with highly established typologies as well as the Japanese at Nendo. With Skeleton, cutlery design goes straight to the bone, emptying material where it is not strictly necessary. The result is the first hollow knife in the history of table service, as well as a highly original joint, again hollowed out, between the handle and the tip to be brought to the mouth.