Silverware: Knives

Knives are among humankind’s first tools. Prehistoric flint examples, which allowed early hunter-gatherers to dismember large animal carcasses, have been unearthed at archaeological sites across Europe. The Copper and Bronze Ages transformed the knife from a sharpened stone into a magnificent metal object, often handsomely decorated, which served as a weapon, multipurpose tool, and critical implement for the preparation and consumption of food. Ritual sacrifice and the ceremonial distribution of meat, facilitated by the knife, flourished at the earliest recorded banquets, with roots as far back as ancient Sumer. These rituals later lay at the center of worship in Homeric Greece, ancient Rome, and the Bible. In medieval Europe, carving became an honorific service performed by noblemen who used slicing and presentation knives of commensurate elegance. Personal knives, carried in a sheath, served as the sole eating utensil. Whenever hands would not suffice, the point of a blade was used to stab food from a platter and place it in the mouth. In northern Europe, where the aristocracy evolved from tribal hunters, the knife maintained its preeminence long after Italians took up the fork. In the United States, knives remained the primary utensil well into the nineteenth century. American knives had wide, rounded blades that conveyed food to the mouth like a kind of individual flat spatula.