Alright, no pictures, because my camera takes film, and my phone is an antique Nokia.
But today, I bought myself - well, rather, today, I finished paying for - an early Yuletide gift for myself.
These are a set - a set of eight, unusually, as sets of six, twelve or 24 are much more usual - of antique fish knives and forks, solid silver with ivory handles and they date from a period earlier in the twentieth century, just at the beginning of the second world war, a period when the (commercial) use of ivory had not yet been prohibited. It would have been easy enough to source a silver plate version, but I preferred to wait for a solid silver set to show up.
They came in their box, pristine, and, I suspect, have never, ever, been used. That is, until the is evening, when the carer and I used two of them with our fish. Why keep a beautiful object solely to admire it? It is that glorious fusion of form and function, and it was designed to be used.
Anyway, I have been looking for a set such as this for at least five years, and spotted it a week ago, as it had just come in and hadn't even been priced in my favourite small antiques shop. Over the course of the week, I set about paying for it, and it came home with me today, in my rucksack. It is beautiful, elegant, understated, exquisite and a pure pleasure to use.
