Historic Cutlery: Змінити Shapes від Palaeolithic to Modern Times

450 colour plates and more than 1000 illustrations of marks.

The more than 3500 items in this unique private collection of cutlery, illustrated with 450 large colour plates, present the expert and the amateur with an outstanding survey of changing shapes of eating implements from the Palaeolithic to the 20th century. The complete collection is divided into three parts.

Part 1 covers cutlery from prehistoric times to the 17th/18th century.

Part 2 unites “table-ware” from the 18th century to the classicist period, which means cutlery laid out to “cover” the table (as in “cover charge”), an extension of its earlier derivation from French “coutelier”, a cutter.

Part 3 shows cutlery from the Historicism to the Neue Sachlichkeit period, and focuses on Art Nouveau or Jugendstil with its sheer endless/innumerable ideas for new shapes and designs by well-known artists and manufacturers.

The very skilful displays of cutlery arranged by the author and collector, are illustrated in large format and natural size on 450 colour plates of superb quality and striking brilliance. Every object is analysed in detail in the wide-ranging documentation supplemented by a bibliography keyed to different subjects, a comprehensive index of marks (foundry marks, silver marks, yellow metal and tin marks as well as manufacturers’ marks) and several subject indexes.

Visually much more engaging than the usual catalogue of a collection, the present publication presents the development of eating utensils from the Palaeolithic to modern times with all the richness of an art book – its scholarship, photography and design answering to the most exacting demands!