Spoon

Louis Nicolle

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This matching fork and spoon are significant not only as rare survivors of Louis XIV’s sumptuary edicts but also as early examples of silver flatware. Although spoons had been used at table since the fifteenth century, forks came into widespread use only in the early part of the seventeenth century, and the concept of a matched fork and spoon, known as a couvert, did not appear until the second half of the century. Knives were included in the couvert toward the end of the 1600s, shortly after this fork and spoon were made. Gilding and engraved scrolling vegetal motifs decorate other surviving couverts of the 1680s.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art