from the editor darra goldstein
Feeding Desire
Holding the meat daintily
between both forefingers and
thumbs, I gnawed off a bite
Not long ago I attended a fancy reception. Availing myself of plate, napkin,
and fork, I moved along the buffet line, expecting to encounter the kinds of small
dishes that were served at nineteenth-century déjeuners à la fourchette. Even though
this was an evening meal, not a late breakfast, I assumed that my fourchette would
serve me well, since it was the only utensil provided. But near the end of the line
I came upon a perfectly roasted tenderloin of beef whose roseate flesh beckoned.
Despite the promise of its name, I knew that a tenderloin could not be managed
with fork alone, and yet I couldn’t resist. I found a seat, introduced myself politely
to my tablemates, and picked up a hunk of meat. Holding it daintily between
both forefingers and thumbs, I gnawed off a bite. It was extremely satisfying.
My resort to tactile eating was, I must confess, ironic, since for the past couple
of years I’ve been near-obsessed with table manners and the way we deliver food
to our mouths. Along with my fellow curators, Sarah Coffin and Ellen Lupton
from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, I have organized an exhibition
called Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005, which
showcases five centuries of European and American flatware. Working for two
years with the objects in the exhibition, I have been enticed, again and again,
into lost worlds. Reclining at a low table with Roman hedonists, I learned how to
use the sharp tip of a cocleare to prise a delectable snail from its shell. Centuries
later, in Florence, I banqueted with elegant courtesans, expertly wielding a small
two-pronged fork to spear the sticky sweetmeats I craved. In colonial Massachusetts
I admired the restrained lines of a pewter spoon as I carefully placed it in my
hope chest for my dowry. But nowhere was I as bedazzled—or did I suffer as much
anxiety—as in Victorian-era America, where silver pieces of every imaginable
shape and size paraded across the table of the Fifth Avenue mansion where (by
some monstrous faux pas) I had been invited to dine.
Pity the nouveau riche of Gilded Age America! While they may have had
money, they still yearned for class, and the lavish tables they set revealed their
anxieties no less than their wealth. Through savvy advertising, silver manufacturers
encouraged the wildest flights of consumption and created a need for utensils that
It’s a pleasure to take an
artfully crafted implement in
hand and reflect on the
age-old human desire for
prestige and power, for
had only limited utility. Now extinct from our tables are the Saratoga chip servers,
the special fried chicken tongs, aspic slices, ice cream hatchets, cucumber servers,
oyster ladles, sardine spades, terrapin soup spoons, chowder spoons, pickle forks,
bon bon scoops, chow chow servers, and toddy ladles that were once considered
de rigueur. So excessive did the number of pieces become that in 1925 Herbert
Hoover, then secretary of commerce, felt compelled to step in. He decreed that
American silver services could contain no more than fifty-five pieces. And within
a few years Emily Post, that great arbiter of etiquette, declared that the choice of
which fork to use at a meal was not really of earth-shattering significance.
But Americans don’t easily shed social anxiety. Just look at the increasing
number of courses on table etiquette currently being marketed to business executives across the country. And yet, Americans are simultaneously staging a revolt
against cumbersome utensils by increasingly seeking out foods we can eat with
our hands. Nevertheless, from time to time it’s a pleasure to take an artfully crafted
implement in hand, one that has the proper weight and balance, and reflect on
the age-old human desire for prestige and power, for connoisseurship and delight.
Please come visit Feeding Desire and see how the tools of the table have,
throughout history, shaped and expressed the universal ritual of eating. For more
information, go to www.cooperhewitt.org/EXHIBITIONS /feeding_desire/index.asp.g
berry spoon; made by c. v. gibert; retailed by f. nicoud; paris, france, ca. 1890; silver. cooper-hewitt, national design museum, smithsonian institution.
museum purchase from smithsonian institution collections acquisition program, decorative arts association acquisition, and sarah cooper-hewitt funds, 1996-56-42. photo: charles schiller.
connoisseurship and delight.