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How to Identify Antique Flatware

It was King Charles II of Great Britain, returning to his throne after years of exile in Europe, who first popularized flatware (a general term for the knives, forks and spoons that feature in a dinner service) as we know it today. Until then, forks were largely unheard of and people would bring their own personal knife and spoon to a meal. In the early 1700s, more efficient methods of production helped to spread their use downward through society and outward to the New World.

Instructions

- 1
  Go through your collection of cutlery and check for any marks. These will usually be on the underside of the stem on spoons and forks and on the point where the blade joins the handle on knives. (If they are positioned elsewhere, that in itself could be an interesting sign of age.) A full set of English hallmarks will enable you to date an item to an exact year, but a maker's name could also furnish you with a timeline by researching it in books such as "Warman's Sterling Silver Flatware." While some makers operated for centuries, others were specific to a particular decade or even a few years.
- 2
  Pick out the spoons and look at their construction. Very early spoons are usually assembled from three separate pieces: a teardrop-shaped bowl, a narrow stem and a decorative finial. From the early 1700s onwards, they were made from a single flat sheet of silver (hence the term "flatware").
- 3
  Turn now to the ends of the stems. These were shaped and decorated according to various fashions over time. Very early flatware sometimes bears the Hanoverian pattern, which is distinctive because it consists of a ridge that runs along the top of the stem, then breaks into two. As a general rule of thumb, flatware looks very plain and unadorned early in the 1700s, then becomes increasingly flamboyant over the next centuries, until by the late Victorian era it is possible to find examples engulfed in decoration from end to end.

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