I somehow spent my first 32 years of life with almost zero pieces of cutlery. When my now-husband and I moved into our first apartment, we realized we had between us a motley crew: three forks, two knives, a couple spoons. This felt manageable until I found myself, a few weeks in, sawing at a kabocha squash with a butter knife. So I hopped online, where I fell in love, as I often do, with the most colorful options available. I side-eyed Sabre’s prices, then ordered a cheap set with cheerful plastic handles in various sherbet hues. I paid very little attention to the silver bits on the other end. I quickly moved on to the purchase of what I saw as more exciting home goods. But what I didn’t realize is that I had merely postponed a fraught, elaborate hunt that would force me to question my taste, my personal aesthetic and, at times, my sanity.
Two years later, that set is now falling apart. As I pull yet another stubby naked fork from the dishwasher, unsheathed from its housing by the sani-heat, I recognize the clock is ticking. I am now older and wiser; I force myself to listen when people talk about microplastics. I must reckon with my impetuous decision-making years earlier. The time has come to buy my first proper Adult set. So I do what anyone would and start researching. I read listicles and explainers. There is a lot out there. Everyone I talk to seems to have an opinion. I am almost immediately overwhelmed.
Flatware is a category of home goods nearly unrivaled in its intimacy (only towels may have the upper hand). Over and over again, we put them in our mouths, our family’s mouths, we ask our dinner guests to do the same. We rinse them by hand and arrange them in the dishwasher, then unload them piece by piece, and tuck each one away with its brothers or sisters. The forks, knives and spoons we use affect us more than we may consciously realize. In “Flatware That’s Not Flat,” a 2018 hard-to-come-by compilation of modernist silverware, the authors explain that research has shown “the taste of food is affected by the weight, size, shape, and color of the flatware used to eat it … testers have rated the same yogurt significantly tastier and more expensive when sampled with a silver spoon as opposed to plastic.”
The realization that putting higher-quality materials in your mouth could result in a higher-quality eating experience belongs to a genre of revelations endemic to my mid-30s. (Almost overnight, my preference for solid wood furniture eclipsed particle board; natural fibers superseded polyester.) Do objects worth mending and maintaining ease my guilt of unnecessary consumption? Yes, sure. Does the notion that everything I buy could — and should — be the “best” version send me down deep research vortexes, hours spent parsing product descriptions and comparing reviews, where superiority is measured mainly by price? Also yes. But this could be different! Unlike with curtains or cabinets, good, functional flatware is all made of the same material: 18/10 stainless steel. Dishwasher-safe, durable and fingerprint resistant.
Having made such good progress on narrowing down material, it’s time to tackle shape. This, I decide, is where I will find my joy. My mind goes straight to a set I had coveted for years: Izabel Lam’s Sphere. Its undulating handles circulated widely on Instagram at the start of the 2020s. Casa Shop, an Australian home goods store and one of Sphere’s few reliable stockists, writes to me over email that “Izabel treats each piece as more than just a utensil; it’s an extension of the dining experience, almost like jewelry for the table.” Stunning, I think. I love jewelry. But I make the mistake of asking around, and my friend Maddy Bailis (an NYC-based fashion consultant) cries caution, DMing me: “I grew up with the wiggly set and it caused hell for all of us.” Her dad, she writes, would infuriate her mother by refusing to use “the torque fork.”
This is somewhat of a blow. I wonder, briefly, whether I even need silverware? After all, forks were a relatively late invention, and not always welcome. In the early 1000s Maria Argyropoulina, a Byzantine emperor’s niece, brought gold forks to Venice for her wedding to the Doge’s son. The haters (Venetian clergymen) were scandalized, because “God in his wisdom provided man with natural forks — his fingers.” When she died of the plague a few years later, they felt vindicated; one particularly judgy saint ascribed it to her use of a “certain golden instrument.”
In Maria’s honor, I regroup. I go with my sister to IKEA. I grasp uselessly at the Dragon and Fröjda utensils zip-tied to the display wall at Burbank. But I feel nothing. And I know, deep down, that the right silverware, like the right jewelry, will inspire immediate passion. I’ll know it when I see it.
An artist who has designed the most jewel-like flatware I’ve seen, and who feels similarly devotional about the poetry of everyday objects, is Frank Traynor of the Perfect Nothing Catalog. In Traynor’s vision, lighters, can openers and outlet covers are reimagined as exquisite pieces of Brutalist art, crisscrossed with strips of tin, encrusted with sea glass and stones. The blanks for his three-piece flatware set, Traynor tells me over the phone, are based on a set of Korean flatware he unearthed, piece-by-piece, serendipitously, from those terrifying thrift store cutlery bins. “Once I found a perfect shape, I could seek out more of them or even have them replicated,” he says. “I like to imagine people actually using them — at least on special occasions.”
And shouldn’t every day be a special occasion? Someone said that, once. And what’s $500 x 6, anyway? Probably not much, in the scheme of things. Staring at Traynor’s creations online, I notice I’m having trouble slowing my heart rate. So I call in a cooler head, who dutifully reminds me that (1) we haven’t budgeted for a special occasion set, (2) I’m deeply dependent on my dishwasher and (3) hadn’t we already decided on stainless steel? I concede, reluctantly, that artist-designed sets aren’t maybe the most practical, for me, right now.
Perhaps those by architects, who I like to think of as artists who are really good at math, are a better option. Some of the chicest flatware is designed by architects. I wonder why so many of them have felt compelled to design cutlery, so I write to Bobbye Tigerman, a decorative arts and design curator at LACMA. Over email, she quotes a line by Italian architect Ernesto Rogers who said he wanted to design everything “from the spoon to the city,” which, Tigerman writes, “underscores the architect’s impulse to create total environments. Flatware is one of the smallest designed objects in our lives and it’s ubiquitous — we use it multiple times per day.”
Convinced, I buy perhaps the most recognizable architect-designed cutlery: Arne Jacobsen for Georg Jensen. I feel really good about my choice. It’s on all the lists. It costs $119 a setting.
The minimalist, low-profile, utterly Danish design is an immediate, uncontested flop. Unsure of its dishwasher tolerance, we bring it out only for company, where it fails to impress. The complaints roll in: The fork tines are too stubby, the dessert spoon holds its contents hostage. Its gleaming surface scratches if we breathe on it. It always has water spots.
I can’t understand what has gone wrong. But then I speak with Dung Ngo, the owner of a 5,000-piece cutlery collection, operator of silverware-porn account @knifeforkspoon.co, and author of an upcoming definitive 20th century history of the category. The Arne Jacobsen set, he explains over Zoom, is an important piece of design history, but not a great piece of flatware. “The knife is too light. The material is barely thicker — so again, graphically it’s gorgeous, but it doesn’t feel like you’re holding a knife in your hand. I think all the pieces are a little light — like the flatware you find on an airplane.”
He’s right. The set’s smooth, flat surfaces and simple lines feel dinky. Its plainness (or plane-ness) leaves our normally maximalist tastebuds craving more. With Jacobsen in hand, I feel undernourished after every meal. Perhaps it’s the stubby forks. But more likely, it’s a kind of aesthetic anemia. Ngo doesn’t put aesthetics on a pedestal the way I do. He doesn’t like the phrase “jewelry for the table.” For his part, Ngo relies on the output of an industrial designer, rather than an architect, for his everyday set. Designed by Wilhelm Wagenfeld, his pieces “probably look fairly conservative to most designers.” “The form, “ he says, “is not revolutionary, but the balance, the handle, the ergonomics are kind of perfect.”
Ergonomics! Right. I recall a friend telling me that she brings her own silverware with her everywhere, a habit that would not have been out of place among the 18th century upper classes. Most flatware is too heavy for her small frame, she says, and also her Pilates instructor had told her to avoid overusing certain arm muscles. Ergonomics are important. Material, finish, balance, shape, design and now ergonomics. It’s all so much to consider. And that complexity is perhaps part of why most people are not compelled to collect cutlery like T-shirts, the way Ngo does. “What’s interesting,” he tells me, “is you go to the fanciest houses and they have the rarest furniture, the most beautiful coffee table, they wear couture in their closet but then the flatware is from Crate & Barrel. Always.”
I am now glutted with information and paralyzed by parameters. I know too much. And yet, I’m keenly aware, too little.
The next time I walk by the local thrift, I decide to peek inside that giant silverware bin. Filled with a bunch of loose steak knives, the environment is precarious. I move carefully, looking for maker’s marks and 18/10 stainless steel. I crouch on the floor and ruthlessly Google image search nearly every piece, sweating profusely under the flimsy output of a nearby fan and the confused gaze of the guy behind the counter. But I emerge from this first expedition flushed and triumphant: I pay for a Georg Jensen “shark” salad fork (designed by Svend Siune, not Arne Jacobsen), a Boda Nova cake spade, various Japanese forks, and a heavy little stainless steel butter knife at the register. The total? $12. The process? Impractical, emotional, chaotic and indulgent. Just the way I like it.
Liz Raiss is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles.
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