'Feeding Desire' At The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Other necessities on view include 12 Mackay silver and gilt peppers and salts, including four spoons that were patented by Edward C. Moore, who also served as a design director at Tiffany. A silver and gilt salt spoon in the Vine pattern by Tiffany is also on view.

An ornate five-piece silver-gilt dessert service comprising four bonbon spoons and grape shears made by Tiffany for presentation to J.P. Morgan is the centerpiece of the dessert exhibit. A Tiffany silver gilt tea and coffee service in the Gourd pattern and three silver gilt demitasse spoons, both of whose designs are attributed to Moore, are on view along with a figuratively embellished Tiffany silver gilt ice bowl, a silver ice cream hatchet and a Tiffany "segar" cutter.

The evolution of table settings is cyclical, but almost always with an eye to achieving ever elusive refinement. While the nature of cuisine drove the forms that appeared, the achievement of elegant behavior was a large factor in the plethora of knives, forks and spoons that emerged.

Flatware, which referred to forks and spoons, and cutlery were generally acquired separately and from different sources. Each evolved through the ages according to the dictates of cuisine and custom. For the Nineteenth Century citizen, it was a mark of sophistication and a declaration of wealth to possess and be able to use correctly all these enhancements of the basic forms.

The knife was a standard form early on for its utility in carving and cutting and for plucking meat from the fire. It was also used for eating - directly off the blade - even into the Nineteenth Century.

The spoon, derived from the shell form, was seen as early as ancient Greece and used for drawing liquid. Down the ages the spoon took on many characteristics and variations, but the essential form remained. On the Eighteenth Century table, when the cuisine of the day was a mix of solids and liquids, the spoon held sway. As ices became the rage, smaller spoons evolved.

By the early Nineteenth Century, egg spoons, salt spoons, mustard spoons, marrow spoons and spoons for all manner of fruit were essential to the well-appointed table. Soup spoons assumed forms predicated on whether the soup was clear or cream.

Of the three table implements, the fork is the most recent form. Food historians suggest that it originated in Italy to aid in the consumption of pasta. The French adopted the fork from Italy in the Seventeenth Century when it was considered impolite to eat meat with both hands. For a time, though, diners might share the same fork, wiping it as it passed from one to another.

Although many of these forms have passed into history, they offer a look at culinary design, ingenuity and social aspiration. The exhibit also suggests the rapidity with which civilized dining evolved: from the primitive tearing of meat from the bone to the accomplished use of molinets, ice cream saws and crumbers.

Silver has always been the metal of choice for eating implements because it does not interact with food; nor does it lend any flavor to the food. Much of the tableware on view is silver, although most knife blades and some early implements are steel.

Until the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries, it was the custom to travel with one's own implements; that is, flatware and cutlery, often worn as fashion accessories.

The Carnegie's former breakfast room, now an interior gallery, is given over to a display of the utensils used before the Seventeenth Century by diners on the move and for dining al fresco. One traveling set, made in Amsterdam in about 1700, includes a bone handled, steel and silver knife and fork, housed in a sharkskin case. A late Seventeenth Century set of three screw-handles with a spoon, knife, fork and a skewer in a case, made in Italy, is also on view.

A traveling spoon and fork set with richly carved coral handles and a silver bowl is curator Sarah Coffin's favorite piece in the show. They were made between 1600 and 1630 in Nuremberg, a center of gold- and silversmithing. She describes them as "the ultimate personal accessories." They would have been stars of the day because of their compelling use of highly unusual materials and color and for their elegant figural carving. The coral handle of the fork is carved in the figure of a knight and the spoon depicts a woman pouring water from a ewer into a bowl. Her back forms the arch of the spoon, which, Coffin adds, lends the piece its balance. The consideration of balance and other attributes is early evidence of ergonomics.

For Coffin, these pieces exemplify the influence of Italianate styles on the lower Rhine and the Netherlands.

Another early set of personal implements on view is a circa 1618 pair of silver gilt and steel knives in a silk velvet and metallic thread case. They were made in the Netherlands and the degree of engraved decoration on the knife handles is remarkable.

The Seventeenth Century traveling sets are displayed in juxtaposition with the accoutrements of contemporary dining on the fly, such as a 1977 disposable plastic picnic set designed by Jean-Pierre Vitrac, and a dining set designed by Raymond Loewy for Air France passengers.

Another contemporary plastic set on view, definitely not designed for travel, includes a blunt knife, a fork and a spoon, with the set having been designed by Armand G. Winfield. It was designed specifically for inmate use within the State of New Mexico Corrections Department.

Only in the second half of the Eighteenth Century did wealthy hosts (and innkeepers) begin to provide flatware for their guests - an innovation that coincided with the introduction of rooms dedicated solely to dining. Display and envy played an important part there as well.

Flatware was commissioned in larger sets, generally all of the same pattern. Although patterns varied, they retained an elemental design similarity. In England, a Hanoverian rattail style evolved into the "Old English pattern."

A mid-Eighteenth Century steel and silver pistol grip fork with three tines commissioned by George Washington as part of a set for Mount Vernon is on view and evokes the rattail. In France, however, the fiddle form was a standard that was later adapted in England and the United States in a squared off manifestation.

The accoutrements of proper beverage service were vast and impressive. As tea, chocolate and coffee became available and gained favor in the Seventeenth Century, new utensils were developed to aid in their preparation and consumption. Each beverage called for its own array of implements dedicated to its consumption.

Tea became the vogue in the second half of the Seventeenth Century and required a silver teapot, a mote spoon for capturing stray leaves in the brew, a tea caddy, teaspoons and a tea scoop, a wave-edge tea infuser, cream ladles and sugar casters, examples of all of which are on view.

Each implement had its own wide variety of manifestation. For example, in England, ladies' teacups were smaller than standard, requiring spoons with shorter handles. As a new import, tea was expensive; caddy spoons were made small. As it became more widely available and less costly, caddy spoons grew larger.

The taking of tea also called for ancillary tools with which to add orange peel, nutmeg and other spices. Examples of these are also on view.

Sugar, too, drove an alteration in form. When it was first introduced in England, it took the form of large cones, which required the use of sugar nips, steel-tipped scissors, to break off chunks of the prized commodity. Sugar tongs for picking up lumps of sugar appeared in the Eighteenth Century and were modified in the Nineteenth Century to accommodate sugar cubes.

Chocolate was stirred in its own silver pot with a tall spoon known as a molinet, an example of which is on view.

Coffee service called for silver coffee pots and coffee spoons. As punch, toddies and syllabub gained in popularity, their accoutrements included spoons with terminals for crushing fruit, strainers for the fruit, ladles and nutmeg graters, examples of all of which are on view.

Dessert was a distinctly separate affair. Before the Sixteenth Century it even required its own separate room. Sometimes, in grander establishments, an entire building, known as a banqueting hall, was devoted solely to the dessert course. Only in the late Eighteenth Century did dessert begin to be served in the dining room.

The main gallery features a large circular table set with eight historical settings, each representative of a particular decorative style. Objects on view here address the ergonomics of the table, commemorative flatware and flatware as a social and industrial index. Part and parcel of such an exposition is the role of technology. The Industrial Age, particularly in the United States, resulted in technological advances as silver plating, gilding and forging and the emergence of such new materials as stainless steel and Bakelite and later, the perennial favorite, plastic.

The exhibition concludes with a look at postwar developments, including a startling table arrangement by Gio Ponti, and settings by other Twentieth Century artists.

"Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500-2005" was organized by Cooper-Hewitt's Coffin, Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design, and guest curator Darra Goldstein, food historian and founding editor of Gastronomica magazine. For information, 212-849-8400 or www.cooperhewitt.org.