Unveiling Culinary Treasures: Did You Know Vintage Sporks Exist? And do they work?
A modern plastic spork
When you think of a spork, naturally you think of the plastic half spoon-half fork that you might get as tableware at a fast food place, something invented and used in the last four or five decades.
That’s what I thought until I came upon some silver plated utensils dating back to the 1920’s to 1940’s that looked like sporks! Come to find out that the spork is even older that that. The first patent on the spork happened way back in on February 3, 1874, 140 years ago, by a Rhode Island doctor named Samuel W. Francis, who looked at a spoon and a fork and thought, there’s one too many utensil’s here. Apparently, he was one who liked to streamline things. Although his invention went on to become very popular, like other innovators he did not see its success in his lifetime.
Sporks became part of elaborate table settings
The funny thing is that the spoon-fork which Dr. Francis invented to cut down on the number of utensils at the dinner table and create a more minimalist dining experience, became, instead, part of more elaborate table settings, adding one more utensil to the show. The fork-spoon also came in silver and sometimes gold, and even Tiffany sold “sporks.” Sporks became so popular that in 1900, the word “spork” entered the dictionary and by our days, as I’ve said, have gone on to be associated more with plastic utensils for fast food.
What were vintage sporks used for? And do they work?
I became curious about what people in the 1920’s to 1940’s were using these sporks for and found that they were labeled either as being for cake and ice cream, or to use eating pieces of melon. The sporks that I found are only 5-1/4 inches long and so it must have been for a very small delicate piece of cake and a small spoonful of ice cream. What is more, spork detractors say that the fork part of the spork is too small to act like a fork and skewer things and the spoon part is too small to make a dent in anything that you would need a spoon for. I can’t wait to try out one of my newfound sporks in a sort of fork vs. spoon vs. spork face off with cake and ice cream! Can the spork beat the fork and spoon? You be the judge!