Arygropoulina, niece of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, is thought to have brought a set to Venice for her marriage to the son of the Doge, in 1004. At this stage, even relatively high status tables used trenchers (from the Old French – tranchier) of stale bread to eat from. The bread absorbed the juices or sauces from meats and could be eaten at the end of the meal in an ordinary household, but was commonly given as alms to the poor in a small ceremony after a feast. Later, when people more commonly carried their own small knives for eating, trenchers were increasingly made from wood, and scoured with sand after the meal to be used again.

The wooden trencher was the precursor of the plate, which began to appear in earthenware, and metal, then later, Delft and porcelain. By that stage, forks had been more widely adopted by Western Europe, particularly more aristocratic women, such as Catherine de Medici who brought some back to France from Italy in 1533. Henry VIII of England was presented with a sterling silver fork to eat his beloved sweetmeats after dinner, but even he still ate with his hands most of the time. His daughter Elizabeth I increased the usage of the fork at her table, but it was not until the second quarter of the seventeenth century that more spoons and forks in sterling appeared for ‘ordinary’ (as in, affluent but not royal) tables. They were, however, often viewed as a rather pompous way to eat, and the Puritan movement that emerged in the early eighteenth century in Europe and particularly Britain meant that ‘fancy’ cutlery sparked religious condemnation. In addition, forks at this stage were still two-pronged, so unless spearing larger pieces of meat or vegetables, they were somewhat impractical for conveying food from plate to mouth. Rising levels of wealth and sophistication in Europe in the early eighteenth century meant that Germany was responsible for adding in a ‘middle’ or third time, accommodating a more delicate was of eating.

The French were quick to adopt a more refined style of living and dining in the eighteenth century, and, keen to discourage violence, and a more sedate dining experience, began to introduce rounded ends to the blades on table knives from 1699 onwards (although ironically, the ‘pistol’ handle was the most popular style at the time). It was the French who changed dining throughout this century by introducing different sized knives and forks for different courses, seen by some as very ostentatious, but it aided their new way of eating, which was with different courses served at separate times, rather than loading all table with food at the same time in the ‘Russian’ or peasant manner.

By the Victorian period, large services with elaborate patterns, some of which are discussed elsewhere on this page, dominated the British and European dining table, with the fork held in the left hand, knife in the right, and different spoons used for the obligatory soup, then custards, sweet syllabubs and sorbets, and of course, tea and coffee. Styles of eating had changed, however, in America, where the table fork was still relatively scarce until around 1800, meaning that people cut their food into small pieces with their knife, before changing to a spoon held in the right hand to then scoop them up. This form of dining caused a sharp divide in the development of British and American cutlery, the latter of which did not develop a wide range of implements until the late nineteenth century.

The technological advances of the early twentieth century, as well as changes in food storage and processing meant that many more items, such as pickle forks, became popular. Additionally, the invention of stainless steel around 1913 meant that knives were no longer made from mild steel, which was troublesome to keep sharp and rust free.