In the 17th century it was not yet common for hosts to provide cutlery when entertaining guests to dinner. Most guests had their own personal eating implements, usually a knife and spoon, with a fork increasingly included towards the end of the century, which were carried in a fitted case. The culture of the day demanded that these ‘should not be merely polished and abundant but also rare and distinct.’ It was the sign of a gentleman that he possessed cutlery made of unusual and valuable materials, including filigree.

This knife and fork are very similar to the kind of cutlery made in Augsburg in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. However, the four prongs on the fork, and the plain band below the top on both pieces, would be unusual for cutlery of that date. It is more likely that they were made in Schleswig-Holstein, in north-west Germany, at the end of the 18th century, when sets of cutlery of archaic form were in common use as wedding gifts. The initials and date were often inscribed on the plain band.