Could someone date this fork and tell me the length of handle?

Hi everyone!

Could someone help me date this fork and also tell me how long the handle would have been? There was a little bit left of it. It may be wood or bone. It is hard to say. It would be before 1865ish, but I suspect a lot older. It was in the trash pile of a home that was built by German settlers in 1808 in Harmony, PA. The trash pile was covered up in 1865. The fork's dimensions are:

The overall length (tip to tip) is 5 5/8"
The widest point is 1 1/18"
The tines are 2" long
The tip of tine to the end of the piece that would be against handle is 4 7'8"
The part that goes inside the handle is 1 1/2" long.

Any help that you can provide is appreciated. I am restoring the fork. It would also be helpful to know if this would have been hand forged. It appears to be so, but as you can see in the picture before the rust was removed it was in pretty bad shape.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Sam

 

You did a wonderful job ! I know less than nothing about cutlery,but I always associate 2 prongs with being much older.

 

Looks like part of a fork from a carving set.

 

Hand forged in the last 500+ years,hand forged in the 21st century.

 

This is an ebay completed listing.
Don't know if what they are saying is true or not.
https://tinyurl.com/y2ywuboc

 

could be part of a Baviarian dagger and fork set that was worn in the sock on traditional costumes.

 

Having a hard time with your measurements, if the tines are 2", which is about what I'd expect from an 18th to early 19th century table fork, then it's just pretty much impossible for the width at the shoulders to be 1-1/8" (should be more like 1/2", and if the measurement from the tip of the tines to the end of the shank is 4-7/8", then that would make the shank almost an inch longer than the tines, and that also looks impossible, since they appear to be around the same length (totaling around 4"), the tang appears to be about right at 1-1/2" - if the sizes I suggest are closer to correct, then the overall length of 5-5/8" should be about right. Can't tell the material of your handle, but they were made of wood, bone, antler, horn, and ivory - they were typically fairly short, and if the overall length measurement is correct, then the handle would have likely been in the area of 3" to 3-1/2" in length.


The image below is my staghorn (antler) handled fork, packed away at the moment, but believe it's right around 6-1/2" to 7" long - found it in a decrepit old tool shed, very rusty, but not like yours. They were used primarily to hold meat down while cutting off a bite. I always used mine to to spear chunks of fruits and vegetables, very handy and pleasant in the hand...





~Cheryl

 

I would estimate somewhere around the 1800's with a wooden handle. I say wooden handle due the the shape. A bone handle would have a longer round shaft and a cap or piece to secure the bone. If you pressed a bone onto your fork end it would have a tendency to split the bone! Great find & awesome job of cleaning it up.

 

Bone handled fork from from excavation at Jefferson's Poplar Forest retreat:

https://www.poplarforest.org/stick-a-fork-in-it/



~Cheryl

 

A rat tailed tang is a round tang that is usually associated with bone or antler; as is the style shown above; a cheap one is only partially thru the handle. A more expensive rat tailed tang has a metal button threaded on the end or the rat tail can be rounded/ forged over. Your tang is trilobular or has more than 2 flats. These flats keep the wooden handle from spinning. Being from New England and spending thousands of hours excavating old dumps I have found trilobular tangs were very common. You would find a much rarer rat tail tang usually associated with digs loaded with oyster shells. A great sign that the dump was from a more affluent home!

 

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Ancienne-fo...ilver-800-Art-Nouveau-jugendstil/233698463315