Dessert Fork, Easton Mold
Oneida Limited, 1995
18/8 Stainless steel
18 x 2.6 x 0.4 cm
Purchased from Oneida Plant, Niagara Falls, New York, 1995
Collection of Julia and Gordon Wichert
The Easton Mold dinner fork has been a part of my family since before this family existed. Acquired as a wedding gift by my parents from the Oneida Outlet in Niagara Falls, this fork belongs to a set that has withstood years of use and wear and remains crucial to the flatware collection in our house 25 years on. This result would be met with approval by Oneida Limited, founded by the Oneida Community - a sect of Christian Perfectionists established in 1880. Desire for ideal products, and the goal of perfection, are both crucial to the Oneida mandate. Though this information was unknown by my family at the time of purchase, it informs the perspective through which we view the artifact.
Despite their everyday function, forks can be of interest when investigating the habits and traditions of a culture. Consider how it is not only the novelty items from a culture that are significant to curators and archaeologists, but more mundane artifacts as well, due to their ability to elucidate operations of everyday life. In some ways, the fork has gained significance in a similar manner throughout my time spent in quarantine. As I have been forced to live at a slower pace due to COVID-19 precautions, I have more time to spend considering the histories and value of the objects around me. With familiarity comes memory, and a more generalized cultural understanding which extends the fork from one dining room to many. The fork represents a basic and universal human need - being the need for food - and yet the fork itself is not universal. In ancient Rome, forks were too expensive to be widely used; the use of chopsticks, rather than forks, is common in various East Asian cultures. The fork itself cannot represent the process of eating through all of time and across all places, and thus becomes specific to the here and the now.
Though the human need to eat is unlikely to change, the means by which humans consume food might be different in the future. The recent past is represented in this fork, but I think more significantly this fork illustrates the impacts of current events on our gaze. The manner in which we are being forced to spend more time with household objects affects their significance to us and, in some cases, develops more meaning associated with those objects. This fork possesses a direct connection to this point in history, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the period during which many of us are spending unprecedented amounts of time in our houses.
Emma Wichert