Gabel, Vorschneidemesser und Vorlegemesser

This garniture comprises a fork, a carving knife, and a trowel-shaped serving knife (presentoir). The fork and carving knife were used to carve the food that was then served or presented to a guest on the serving knife. The handles of all three are made of agate, attached to the blade with an enamelled gold setting. The blade of the serving knife is wide and rounded; note the unidentified bladesmith’s mark (a five-pointed star above a crescent moon) at the edge of the blade. The carving knife (bearing the same mark) has a single-edged blade and an enlarged, curved, double-edged tip. The fork has a long octagonal handle made of gilt silver and ends in two short prongs.

The set was probably made in Milan. This is suggested by the decoration of the mounts – blue-and-white enamelled crescent moons are only found on works produced by Milanese workshops. The way the handles are attached, with the mount joining blade and handle, also suggests they originated south of the Alps; north of the Alps, a hole was drilled into the mount and a thin extension of the blade riveted to the ends of the handle.

The precious and elegant handling suggest this set was never actually used. It is presumably an objet d’art for a Kunstkammer, though it may have been used on special occasions for serving at court banquets. The set comes from the imperial gun room (Kaiserliche Hofgewehrkammer, cat. 509) in Vienna, where it was attributed to Emperor Matthias: ‘from the first half of the seventeenth century, Matthias’ (aus der 1tn. Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts Mathias). We can no longer determine if it originally belonged to Matthias or his older brother Rudolf; Rudolf’s close contacts with Milanese artists would suggest that it was he who ordered it.