The bottom of this web page has links to articles on knives, chopsticks, forks, spooons, 'portable cutlery'. Each article has many illustrations, some from the 17th century.
Most detailed site on fork history: http://www.byu.edu/ipt/projects/m… --------------------------- Large forks with two tines have been used since Ancient Greece to help in carving and serving meat. "An Englishman named Thomas Coryate brought the first forks back to England after seeing them in Italy during his travels in 1608." The French were already using them. At first, the English considered them effeminate.
"Small, slender-handled forks with two tines were generally used for sweet, sticky foods or for food (like mulberries) which was likely to stain the fingers. By the mid 1600s, eating with forks like those [pictured at the website] to the right was considered fashionable among wealthy British."
-- California Academy of Sciences http://www.calacademy.org/researc… --------------------------- The fork "was introduced in England only in 1611 by Thomas Coryat through his book 'Coryat's Curdities Hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Savoy, Italy, &c.'" -- "History of the Fork" http://www.didyouknow.cd/forks.htm ---------------------------- "1611: Back in England [Coryat] is given the nickname 'Furcifer,' means 'fork bearer' but also 'gallows bird.' He is widely ridiculed and considered effeminate and affected."
"1630: Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony [uncle of George Downing, Pepys's boss at the Exchequer in early 1660] possesses what is said to be the first and only fork in colonial America."
"Early 18th Century: ... In England ... forks still have two tines and are not so helpful for scooping up bites of food." http://www.cuisinenet.com/glossar…
Even in the Middle Ages, dinner hosts supplied guests with spoons, unlike the practice with knives. The Anglo-Saxon word "spon" means chip or splinter of wood. The Latin and Greek words for spoon derive from words for shell. By the 14th century, spoons were being made of tinned iron, brass, pewter, and other metals. Pewter was especially cheap and widely used.
The Romans had a spoon called a 'ligula' for soups and soft foods that looks surprisingly like a modern spoon (there's a picture of one at this web page).
"Because hosts did not provide cutlery for their guests during the Middle Ages in Europe, most people carried their own knives [...] in sheaths attached to their belts." The knives served a dual purpose as tableware and weapons. Before forks gained popular acceptance, knives were used to cut and then spear food before bringing it to the lips. The points at the end of knives no longer had a definite purpose once forks became popular. In a precursor to gun control, King Louis XIV of France in 1669 banned all pointed knives on the street or the dinner table, and he had all knife points ground down.
Photographs from the Kelmarsh Hall Festival of History showing a 17th Century picnic.
I can't be sure from the clothes of the date being recreated, but it's certainly in the latter half of the century. My guess in that it's after the diary period.
Photographed by my brother, whose Fotopages site has a huge number of pictures, mostly completely irrelevant to The Diary
It says in part that the Italians and French widespreadly adopted two pronged forks before the British, which might account for some of Cosmo's disdain for English dining. Since Charles II and James grew up there in their formative years, I assume they used forks. But I assume Pepys grew up not using them.
The elaborate decorum and manners demanded in the 17th century mean little to us today. They evolved in order to create certainty. Crossing the invisible borders of certainty could be interpreted as disregarding social norms when those norms were the only thing keeping people peacefully in line. People who broke the norms were considered dangerous, and capable of anything. When someone shows that a taboo does not function, society feels insecure about what that person is going to do next.
In most situations, those norms dictate the considerate things to do. They show respect for the other people at the table, or in the room, for elderly people, or people with disabilities. Good manners are acts of good faith, showing appreciation and respect, and in turn demand that you be treated with the same respect.
Many of us grew up with the “no elbows on the dining room table” rule. This goes back to at least the 15th century, as it’s easier to start a fight if your arms are flexed and you have a loose posture. At that time, you also used your own dagger at the table; it was long and sharp. Times have changed, but sitting up straight and keeping your elbows off the table are still signs of a good upbringing.
In Italy, starting in the 1500s, nobles began to lay out individual table settings for their guests. For the first time, each diner would be apportioned their own spoon, fork, knife, glass, and plate. This led to an abrupt shift in table manners. Suddenly, dining etiquette was less about common courtesy and more about demonstrating your sophistication. https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti… The English were just adopting the use of a two-pronged fork now, and Pepys never says if he brings his own, or if his hosts are setting places.
I suspect Cosmo was dining in the wrong company:
A writer in 1585 observed that there were 3 sorts of men whose manners were to be reprehended: those who neither invited neighbors to dinner nor accepted invitations from them; those who invited them, but declined return invitations; and those who accepted invitations, but never issued any themselves.
It was with good reason that Richard Baxter regarded ‘freeholders and tradesmen’ as ‘the strength of religion and civility in the land’.
Freeholders and tradesmen were certainly more civil in their behavior than many aristocrats, whose conduct was often noisy, boorish and inconsiderate.
Most of the middling classes were hostile to aristocratic values; they rejected dueling and the gentleman’s code of honor that went with it; and they preferred diligence and thrift to conspicuous leisure and profligate expenditure. They also exceeded their superiors in personal cleanliness and linguistic propriety. That sums up Pepys.
Their characteristic error was that of excessive refinement. Pepys is working on that.
'Obliging behaviour’ and ‘genteel deportment’ were accepted, important qualifications for anyone engaged in commerce. ‘They who would enfavour themselves for the advantage of any business,’ noted a trader in 1638, ‘must show themselves affable, smooth and courteous.’
The man who stood behind the counter had to be ‘all courtesy, civility, and good manners’. No discourteous trader, it was claimed, had ever risen to a great fortune; and the economic expansion of 18th-century England would have been impossible without a widespread ethic of honesty, courtesy and trustworthiness.
An important civilizing role was played by the thousands of voluntary clubs and societies that sprang up all over the country in the 17th and 18th centuries. They included associations of like-minded friends who met in taverns and eating places to drink, dine and converse. Some of these became aggressively masculine gatherings, bawdy and drunken. Others, such as the Jacobean meetings of poets, lawyers and politicians associated with Ben Jonson and his friends, were self-conscious agents of cultivated sociability.
The rules for Ben Jonson’s Apollo Club in the early 1620s pointedly dissociated its members from the aristocratic rowdies of the day: "And let our only emulation be Not drinking much but talking wittily. . . . To fight and brawl (like Hectors) let none dare, Glasses or windows break, or hangings tear."
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the in pursuit of civility, middle-class English home became better equipped for entertaining visitors. As houses were enlarged, room spaces were differentiated and expenditure increased on tables, linen, cutlery and tableware, domestic eating and drinking became an important aspect of what contemporaries regarded as ‘civility’.
The authors of the 17th century cookery books assumed their readers would entertain at meals ‘their kindred, friends, allies and acquaintances’; and the frequency of such domestic entertaining is confirmed by diaries of the times.
Mild intoxication was accepted as a helpful aid to convivial conversation, although the new nonalcoholic drinks of coffee, tea and chocolate also soon played a central role in public sociability.
Cosmo records ladies holding open house at what we think of as afternoon tea time. The tea party became a ubiquitous 18th century social ritual.
The coffee-houses attracted ‘civil’ and ‘intelligent’ company that they could not fail to ‘civilize our manners, enlarge our understandings, refine our language, [and] teach us a generous confidence and handsome mode of address’.
While we are discussing etiquette, Pepys' life has made him aware of “The Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” a 110 point code of conduct which was based on a 16th-century set of precepts compiled for young gentlemen by Jesuit instructors. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Food has always been central to human life, but our eating habits have evolved considerably over time. For instance, the idea of eating 3 meals a day is now an intrinsic practice for many people, but it’s a relatively recent development in human history. For centuries, meal habits were sporadic and dictated by various factors: success in hunting or agriculture, religious practices, work schedules, or even the availability of lighting are amongst them.
So how did we arrive at a trio of daily meals?
Of our 3 routine meals, “dinner” has the deepest etymological roots, although the meaning of the word has changed over time. In ancient Roman times, it was the one large meal that everyone ate, and it was consumed around noon. This extended into the Middle Ages in Europe.
However, laborers often ate a small meal of bread and ale early in the morning before starting a day’s work on the farm. Their main meal of the day, called dinner, was served around noon, and a light snack, known as supper, was sometimes eaten in the evening.
By the late 1700s, workdays became longer and people increasingly worked away from home, so people could no longer come home to eat their main meal of the day, and artificial lighting — primarily candles — became more accessible and reliable, enabling household activities to go later into the evening.
As Pepys records, the timing of dinner began to shift, and by the end of the 18th century many people were eating dinner in the evening after returning home from work. I think we also have to consider that entertaining company at home in the evening also became more common-place.
For most people in Europe and the United States, this evening meal became the largest and anchor meal of the day by the mid-1800s, informing the traditional family dinner as we still know it.
10 Annotations
First Reading
David Quidnunc • Link
THE HISTORY OF EATING UTENSILS
http://www.calacademy.org/researc…
A website of the California Academy of Sciences
The bottom of this web page has links to articles on knives, chopsticks, forks, spooons, 'portable cutlery'. Each article has many illustrations, some from the 17th century.
To search their database, start here:
http://www.calacademy.org/researc…
David Quidnunc • Link
FORKS: "effeminate" 17th century import
Most detailed site on fork history:
http://www.byu.edu/ipt/projects/m…
---------------------------
Large forks with two tines have been used since Ancient Greece to help in carving and serving meat. "An Englishman named Thomas Coryate brought the first forks back to England after seeing them in Italy during his travels in 1608." The French were already using them. At first, the English considered them effeminate.
"Small, slender-handled forks with two tines were generally used for sweet, sticky foods or for food (like mulberries) which was likely to stain the fingers. By the mid 1600s, eating with forks like those [pictured at the website] to the right was considered fashionable among wealthy British."
-- California Academy of Sciences
http://www.calacademy.org/researc…
---------------------------
The fork "was introduced in England only in 1611 by Thomas Coryat through his book 'Coryat's Curdities Hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Savoy, Italy, &c.'"
-- "History of the Fork" http://www.didyouknow.cd/forks.htm
----------------------------
"1611: Back in England [Coryat] is given the nickname 'Furcifer,' means 'fork bearer' but also 'gallows bird.' He is widely ridiculed and considered effeminate and affected."
"1630: Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony [uncle of George Downing, Pepys's boss at the Exchequer in early 1660] possesses what is said to be the first and only fork in colonial America."
"Early 18th Century: ... In England ... forks still have two tines and are not so helpful for scooping up bites of food."
http://www.cuisinenet.com/glossar…
David Quidnunc • Link
SPOON History
Even in the Middle Ages, dinner hosts supplied guests with spoons, unlike the practice with knives. The Anglo-Saxon word "spon" means chip or splinter of wood. The Latin and Greek words for spoon derive from words for shell. By the 14th century, spoons were being made of tinned iron, brass, pewter, and other metals. Pewter was especially cheap and widely used.
The Romans had a spoon called a 'ligula' for soups and soft foods that looks surprisingly like a modern spoon (there's a picture of one at this web page).
http://www.calacademy.org/researc…
David Quidnunc • Link
KNIVES
"Because hosts did not provide cutlery for their guests during the Middle Ages in Europe, most people carried their own knives [...] in sheaths attached to their belts." The knives served a dual purpose as tableware and weapons. Before forks gained popular acceptance, knives were used to cut and then spear food before bringing it to the lips. The points at the end of knives no longer had a definite purpose once forks became popular. In a precursor to gun control, King Louis XIV of France in 1669 banned all pointed knives on the street or the dinner table, and he had all knife points ground down.
http://www.calacademy.org/researc…
------------------------
KNIVES IN 17TH CENTURY STILL LIFE PAINTINGS
Four German, six Dutch, one Swiss (NOT an army knife). Just pics.
http://pw1.netcom.com/~brlevine/s…
Dave Bell • Link
A 17th Century Picnic
Photographs from the Kelmarsh Hall Festival of History showing a 17th Century picnic.
I can't be sure from the clothes of the date being recreated, but it's certainly in the latter half of the century. My guess in that it's after the diary period.
Photographed by my brother, whose Fotopages site has a huge number of pictures, mostly completely irrelevant to The Diary
http://jfbell20.fotopages.com/?en…
Third Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
For lovely pictures of forks, and their history, see
https://www.countrylife.co.uk/foo…
It says in part that the Italians and French widespreadly adopted two pronged forks before the British, which might account for some of Cosmo's disdain for English dining. Since Charles II and James grew up there in their formative years, I assume they used forks. But I assume Pepys grew up not using them.
The elaborate decorum and manners demanded in the 17th century mean little to us today. They evolved in order to create certainty. Crossing the invisible borders of certainty could be interpreted as disregarding social norms when those norms were the only thing keeping people peacefully in line. People who broke the norms were considered dangerous, and capable of anything. When someone shows that a taboo does not function, society feels insecure about what that person is going to do next.
In most situations, those norms dictate the considerate things to do. They show respect for the other people at the table, or in the room, for elderly people, or people with disabilities. Good manners are acts of good faith, showing appreciation and respect, and in turn demand that you be treated with the same respect.
Many of us grew up with the “no elbows on the dining room table” rule. This goes back to at least the 15th century, as it’s easier to start a fight if your arms are flexed and you have a loose posture. At that time, you also used your own dagger at the table; it was long and sharp. Times have changed, but sitting up straight and keeping your elbows off the table are still signs of a good upbringing.
San Diego Sarah • Link
Cosmo, the future Grand Duke of Turin, is recorded as not enjoy English dining manners.
See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
In Italy, starting in the 1500s, nobles began to lay out individual table settings for their guests. For the first time, each diner would be apportioned their own spoon, fork, knife, glass, and plate. This led to an abrupt shift in table manners. Suddenly, dining etiquette was less about common courtesy and more about demonstrating your sophistication.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti…
The English were just adopting the use of a two-pronged fork now, and Pepys never says if he brings his own, or if his hosts are setting places.
I suspect Cosmo was dining in the wrong company:
A writer in 1585 observed that there were 3 sorts of men whose manners were to be reprehended:
those who neither invited neighbors to dinner nor accepted invitations from them;
those who invited them, but declined return invitations;
and those who accepted invitations, but never issued any themselves.
It was with good reason that Richard Baxter regarded ‘freeholders and tradesmen’ as ‘the strength of religion and civility in the land’.
Freeholders and tradesmen were certainly more civil in their behavior than many aristocrats, whose conduct was often noisy, boorish and inconsiderate.
Most of the middling classes were hostile to aristocratic values; they rejected dueling and the gentleman’s code of honor that went with it; and they preferred diligence and thrift to conspicuous leisure and profligate expenditure. They also exceeded their superiors in personal cleanliness and linguistic propriety. That sums up Pepys.
Their characteristic error was that of excessive refinement. Pepys is working on that.
'Obliging behaviour’ and ‘genteel deportment’ were accepted, important qualifications for anyone engaged in commerce. ‘They who would enfavour themselves for the advantage of any business,’ noted a trader in 1638, ‘must show themselves affable, smooth and courteous.’
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 2
The man who stood behind the counter had to be ‘all courtesy, civility, and good manners’. No discourteous trader, it was claimed, had ever risen to a great fortune; and the economic expansion of 18th-century England would have been impossible without a widespread ethic of honesty, courtesy and trustworthiness.
An important civilizing role was played by the thousands of voluntary clubs and societies that sprang up all over the country in the 17th and 18th centuries. They included associations of like-minded friends who met in taverns and eating places to drink, dine and converse. Some of these became aggressively masculine gatherings, bawdy and drunken. Others, such as the Jacobean meetings of poets, lawyers and politicians associated with Ben Jonson and his friends, were self-conscious agents of cultivated sociability.
The rules for Ben Jonson’s Apollo Club in the early 1620s pointedly dissociated its members from the aristocratic rowdies of the day:
"And let our only emulation be
Not drinking much but talking wittily.
. . .
To fight and brawl (like Hectors) let none dare,
Glasses or windows break, or hangings tear."
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the in pursuit of civility, middle-class English home became better equipped for entertaining visitors. As houses were enlarged, room spaces were differentiated and expenditure increased on tables, linen, cutlery and tableware, domestic eating and drinking became an important aspect of what contemporaries regarded as ‘civility’.
The authors of the 17th century cookery books assumed their readers would entertain at meals ‘their kindred, friends, allies and acquaintances’; and the frequency of such domestic entertaining is confirmed by diaries of the times.
Mild intoxication was accepted as a helpful aid to convivial conversation, although the new nonalcoholic drinks of coffee, tea and chocolate also soon played a central role in public sociability.
Cosmo records ladies holding open house at what we think of as afternoon tea time. The tea party became a ubiquitous 18th century social ritual.
The coffee-houses attracted ‘civil’ and ‘intelligent’ company that they could not fail to ‘civilize our manners, enlarge our understandings, refine our language, [and] teach us a generous confidence and handsome mode of address’.
For more info and sources, see: https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2022/…
San Diego Sarah • Link
While we are discussing etiquette, Pepys' life has made him aware of “The Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” a 110 point code of conduct which was based on a 16th-century set of precepts compiled for young gentlemen by Jesuit instructors.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
San Diego Sarah • Link
Food has always been central to human life, but our eating habits have evolved considerably over time.
For instance, the idea of eating 3 meals a day is now an intrinsic practice for many people, but it’s a relatively recent development in human history.
For centuries, meal habits were sporadic and dictated by various factors: success in hunting or agriculture, religious practices, work schedules, or even the availability of lighting are amongst them.
So how did we arrive at a trio of daily meals?
Of our 3 routine meals, “dinner” has the deepest etymological roots, although the meaning of the word has changed over time.
In ancient Roman times, it was the one large meal that everyone ate, and it was consumed around noon. This extended into the Middle Ages in Europe.
However, laborers often ate a small meal of bread and ale early in the morning before starting a day’s work on the farm. Their main meal of the day, called dinner, was served around noon, and a light snack, known as supper, was sometimes eaten in the evening.
By the late 1700s, workdays became longer and people increasingly worked away from home, so people could no longer come home to eat their main meal of the day, and artificial lighting — primarily candles — became more accessible and reliable, enabling household activities to go later into the evening.
As Pepys records, the timing of dinner began to shift, and by the end of the 18th century many people were eating dinner in the evening after returning home from work. I think we also have to consider that entertaining company at home in the evening also became more common-place.
For most people in Europe and the United States, this evening meal became the largest and anchor meal of the day by the mid-1800s, informing the traditional family dinner as we still know it.
FROM https://historyfacts.com/world-hi…