SC - Tablewear

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Not related to food, but to eating it...

As a Ren Fair actor, i have two, count 'em, two sets of eating 
utensils, a brass two pronged fork and matching more-or-less 
hemispherical bowl spoon (watch out for acids, make you taste the 
brass) and a hand forged iron set (two-pronged fork and more 
elongated-bowl spoon).

I know that the prevailing wisdom is that the forks wouldn't really 
have been used in Elizabethan England, but at small fairs we buy our 
food, often Thai stir fried noodles (don't ask), since i'm primarily 
vegetarian, and forks come in handy.

But a late period Byzantine reenactor says on his website that there 
is evidence of two-pronged forks at that time (i think around the 
time of the of the Seljuk Turks - what's that, 11th to 13th C., i 
think)
http://www-personal.une.edu.au/~tdawson/tware.html

Anyone else have any knowledge of this? Any other information about 
fork use? typical table ware of the 10th through 13th centuries, 
anywhere in the "Knowne Worlde"? I'm guessing my Near Eastern persona 
would have been content with clean fingers, but, well, inquiring 
minds, and all that...

Thanks,

Anahita Gauri al-shazhiyya bint-Karim al-hakim al-Fassi