L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 10 THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2019 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE Italian inventions: the utilitarian table fork, once a "scandalous" innovation MARIELLA RADAELLI I n most western households, forks are a basic part of a table s etting — unles s you're all eating is soup. The relationship Italians have with the fork is certainly crucial. H ow could w e eat s paghetti without one? When I was a kid, my dad spent hours teaching me how to twirl my fork so that not a strand of spaghetti hung down as I lift- ed that incredible tool to my mouth. He also taught me you don't use a fork and a spoon to eat pasta. Twirling spaghetti against a spoon is for children and at a certain point I had to grow up. In his book The Civilizing Process (1939), sociologist Nor- bert Elias traced the "civilizing" of manners in Western Europe. He highlighted the Italian inven- tion of the fork and its physical development as manifestations of social interaction and norms of etiquette and decorum. Both the words forchetta and "fork" originate from the Latin w o r d f u r c a , w h i c h a c t u a l l y translates as "pitchfork", but the kinds of forks ancient Romans used (furcula, fuscina and fus- cinula) were not the type we employ today. They had one or two straight tines for the only purpose of spearing or anchor- ing food while cutting. "Lady" fork made its public debut in Venice in 1003 when a Byzantine princess named Maria married Giovanni Orseolo, the son of Doge Pietro II Orseolo. The memorable meal at their wedding feast scandalized the e n t i r e R e p u b b l i c a M a r i n a r a because Maria utilized a two- pronged gold fork to eat. Clergymen condemned the princess's behavior as uptight, sinful and indecent, judging the n e w u t e n s i l a s a d i a b o l i c a l i n s t r u m e n t o f p e r v e r s i o n : i t evoked the symbolism of the pitchfork associated with the devil. In his work De Institutione Monialis, Saint Pier Damiani (1007-1072), at the time bishop of Ostia, recounted the unprece- dented behavior: "She did not touch the dishes with her hands but she had the food cut in very small pieces by the eunuchs. Then she just tasted them, bring- ing them to her mouth with two- pronged gold forks." The word "forchetta" entered common usage by the end of the 1300s. One of the first recorded references in literature occurs in Il Trecentonovelle (1392), a col- lection of short stories written b y F l o r e n t i n e a u t h o r F r a n c o S a c c h e t t i , w h o s a t i r i z e d t h e manners of his contemporaries. One novella tells about a man named Noddo who starts to gulp down large quantities of maca- roni while others still have the first bite of pasta on their fork. Noddo must have loved to eat and eat plenty. When we eat well and plenty, we are defined as buona forchetta. And when our conversation is replete with affectations — or parliamo in punta di forchetta — we figura- tively talk while sitting on the tines of a fork.  The new cutlery soon met a social need and was spreading fast in Italy, thanks to the sense of cleanliness and sophistication germane to Italian culture, wrote Elias. By the end of the 1300s, it was commonly used by the mer- chants, who carried their own cutlery in a case called cadena ready to be opened at every din- n e r p a r t y . I n t h e 1 4 0 0 s t h e Medici family had 56 silver forks in their kitchen. Yet we seldom see the fork as an object portrayed in the countless paintings produced throughout the history of art due to the stigma attached to it. Some examples exist, such as the third in Sandro Botticelli's s e r i e s o f p a i n t i n g s e n t i t l e d N o v e l l a d i N a s t a g i o d e g l i Onesti, inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, which depicts a scene of the powerful Medicis sitting together with members of the Pucci family in front of an immaculate table- c l o t h e q u i p p e d w i t h t w o - pronged forks. The painting was commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent as a wedding gift to Giannozzo Pucci on the occasion of his marriage in 1438 with Lucrezia Bini. By then the fork was virtually unknown in the rest of Europe. Caterina De Medici intro- duced the fork to the French in t h e 1 5 0 0 s w h e n s h e b e c a m e q u e e n o f F r a n c e . H e r d o w r y i n c l u d e d d o z e n s o f f o r k s w r o u g h t b y t h e R e n a i s s a n c e goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. The seminal book of western etiquette Il Galateo by Monsign- or Giovanni Della Casa, pub- lished in Venice in 1558, helped formalize rules directed at Euro- pean polite society. However, the British were slower to accept the fork and laughed at this feminine affecta- tion of the Italians. In 1608, English traveler Thomas Coryat took the Grand Tour of Europe and during his Italian days was astounded to see people eating with forks. "I observed a custom in all those Italian cities and towns, through which I passed that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels," he w r o t e i n h i s b o o k C r u d i t i e s H a s t i l y G o b b l e d U p i n F i v e M o n t h s , " T h e I t a l i a n d o e s always at their meals use a little fork when they cut the meat." The model of the four-point- ed fork we employ today was conceived in Naples under the reign of a gourmet king, Ferdi- n a n d I V o f B o u r b o n ( 1 7 5 9 - 1799). It was designed by the c o u r t c h a m b e r l a i n G e n n a r o Spadaccini to facilitate the well- known "twirl method" Italians perform on a daily basis. The Spadaccini fork helps us gra- c i o u s l y g u i d e t h e s t r a n d s o f spaghetti into a ball around the fork ready for the delight of the sublime. The word forchetta entered common usage by the end of the 1300s © Tatjana Walter | Dreamstime.com The model of the four-pointed fork we use today was conceived in Naples

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