A table fork

I've been wondering about the origins of everyday artifacts in my home.

How about the fork - the kind you put on your dinner table? I thought the common table fork would be a very old invention, but it seems it's actually a relatively recent addition to the table. Sure, in some cultures it would never have been thought of - where chopsticks serve the same purpose. But in the western world, how did we last so long with dirty fingers after every meal. This entry became a bit of a detective story - for better or worse - like evolutionary psychology.

I'm sure every modern western home has a full set of forks, perhaps not all matching. Here's a picture of a fork I found in my kitchen drawer - from an 8-place setting by William Fraser (Nortica style). And I found a lot of other forks about too - i.e., the kind I'm trying to convince my kids to use (see picture).

Maybe you live in a home with an extravagant four-fork place setting (dinner fork, salad fork, fish fork, dessert fork - I'm sure there are more), as any newylwed is bound to be aware of. How luxurious to arrive at someone's home to be entrusted with a set of forks for your own personal use! It seems only yesterday that you had to bring your own fork, or worse, make do with a single communal serving fork in the middle of the table (at a Greek or Roman table). (On a side note, when Charles I of England introduced the first modern table setting in 1633 he said: "It is decent to use a fork." Did this begin the fork's rise?)

So why did it take so long for such a useful tool to become a success? Even after it was introduced into Europe, in Italy, it still took around 500 years to become widely accepted across all classes.

Maybe it's because there have been surprisingly few innovations in eating over time. The introduction of a new one is then bound to be resisted. "If it ain't broke don't fix it."

Maybe some people did actually think they were unnecessary. A member of the Venetian clergy said, when the fork first made its appearance in Venice from Byzantium in the 11th century, "God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks - his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating." But this was probably said out of prejudice, fear of cultural change, and distrust of the Byzantine princess who brought the detested artifact and who was betrothed to an heir to the Doge.

Another thought is that, contrary to what you might think, forks are not so obvious to use. Just try to teach a toddler how to use a fork. Spoons? No problem for them. Fingers? A no-brainer. Chopsticks? They're just long fingers aren't they? My kids will stab a piece of food, lift the fork towards their mouth, remove the food with their fingers, stick the fingers into their mouth, and put the fork down, mission accomplished. Which is apparently what early fork users thought they were for: shaking the sauce off.

Should you be scared of a fork? Think of the sell: "Go on, it's easy! Just put this thing with sharp metal spikes into your mouth. Watch your tongue!" Early forks were very sharp with quite long metal tines so that the precious metal would wear down more slowly. The French reportedly thought they were dangerous, but probably they just didn't trust the Italians, who, after getting used to the Byzantine gift, spread them to Europe.

Was it the fork's association with nastiness? The word fork comes from the Old English forca ("forked instrument used by torturers"), which was "appropriated" from the Latin furca ("pitchfork"), a farming implement. In another nasty association (to some tastebuds) parsnips are named after the Latin word pastinaca from pastinum ("two-pronged fork", from the shape of the root).

Finally, maybe it was because the fork took so long to evolve: "I'll wait for version 2.0." After its controversial arrival in Italy in the 11th century it took over 500 years to spread throughout Europe and the New World. But these forks were of the two-tine variety. It wasn't until the 17th century that two more tines were added. And then the bowl shape. The final innovation, electro-plating, completed the fork's evolutionary appearance in every kitchen drawer and dinner table. Oh, and don't forget the spork.

My feeling is that it was hygiene, cleanliness, and civilized manners that probably provided the right evolutionary environment. These swept through Europe starting in the 16th century, requiring a good quality fork (chopsticks already lost the game in Europe, but that must be another story.) And the rest is (recent) history.

(The evolution of the pitchfork and other agricultural forks is much more difficult to assemble, but these artifacts are out of scope of Artifactology.)

Links:
A history of the table fork (from the Society for Creative Anachronism, who are concerned about using the right kind of fork in the right way)
Another history of the fork
A history of the fork in England
Roman silverware and dishes (at Kidipede)


Next post: the pillow.

A pencil

I've been wondering about the origins of everyday artifacts in my home.

How about the pencil. I'm sure every home has at least one pencil. I have many, like the Mirado Classic shown here. Pencils are truly amazing - design simplicity incarnate. I challenge you to find a more simple and perfect design for an artifact that is so useful: A mere stick of pure carbon sheathed in a wooden holder. Unpretentious, economical, robust, works almost anywhere.

Worldwide, 14 billion pencils are sold every year, which is more than 2 per person, and if fully used for writing would put down about 630 trillion words (at 45,000 words per pencil), or 3,150 Terabytes of information, which is about 5 times the estimated amount of the information on the Web (in 2003). We sure are traditional when it comes to writing.

Its invention seems obvious, but the first pencil emerged only in 1565, one hundred years after Gutenberg's printing press had revolutionized the written word, in 1440. A staggering 15 million books were published by 1499 (I wonder how that compares to the growth of the Web, per capita). But readers still had to wait 66 years before they could mark up the book pages with doodles and cartoons.

The design of the pencil may appear simple, but its evolution was not. Serendipity led to its discovery (perhaps like a random genetic mutation). In 1564 "black lead" was discovered in Borrowdale, Cumbria, England, and very soon England grew to be the pencil leader. Modern pencils were more likely discovered than invented, since graffiti goes back to 25,000 year old cave paintings, and 5,000 year old accounting on clay tablets.

No one knew what this black lead really was, but it sure did write well. The first problem then emerged: black lead was brittle and greasy, so it had to be wrapped in string, which could be unravelled as the lead was used up - that's clever. Later, it was sheathed in wooden tubes hollowed out by hand, or the apparently easier sandwich between pieces of wood, none of them great solutions, really.

It wasn't until 1779 that C. W. Scheele took the time to work out that black lead was really a form of carbon. A. G. Werner renamed it graphite (from the Greek graphein, to write) shortly thereafter.

After a while, the world's only source of pure graphite was scribbled onto millions of sheets of paper, most of it lost forever. (How many sheets no one can tell: the average pencil can fill about 56 sheets using the 45,000 words/pencil calculation.) Less-pure graphite had to be ground down and mixed with other substances, the best being clay (through a process invented by Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795). It used to be that we wrote in clay; now we write with clay. The best graphite now comes from a deposit discovered on the Chinese/Russian border in 1890. The best clay comes from West Germany. The best wood is incense cedar, which comes from purpose grown forests in the Western United States. A seemingly simple deisgn, perfected over time, with a global reach.



Other innovations include painting them yellow to indicate the quality Asian graphite (in fact, the Mirado shown above was originally a Mikado - Asian quality assured survival of the pencil, until war broke out!), the eraser to even further disperse the graphite (patented in 1858, and sold for $100,000), and the mechanical pencil in 1822, an almost entirely different beast than a pencil.

Does size matter? The word pencil is derived from the Latin penis (actually meaning tail), by way of peniculus (brush), penicillus (paintbrush, also the root of penicillin), to the Old French pincel (artist's paintbrush). But it was coined some 200 years before the pencil was invented, and I can't find out why or how a graphite stick came to known as a pencil, especially since the new pencil technology did not displace the old.

Despite all these innovations, not to mention great and highly useful spin-offs such as penciling someone in, the pencil has lost its place as the most popular writing instrument. It is no longer essential. The ballpoint pen has mostly displaced it. The typewriter also took a swing at it, but the computer might be the pencil's Cro Magnon, totally displacing it within a few years now. Yet, I have stacks of pencils in my house, and pencils apparently write more information on paper than is typed on the Web. Why? I think it is design simplicity that is assuring its survival ... so far.

To end, a thought about pencils and education. Pencils are linked to education and that is maybe why they have stuck around for so long. They are cheap and robust, and are indispensable in the Third World classroom. One student : one pencil. It's also difficult to train teachers in new technologies such as the typewriter, which might have been more effective for learning, according to some studies back when the typewriter was the future. It's also telling that some teachers didn’t like eraser technology since they thought erasers would encourage students to make mistakes. Fear of new technology! Nevertheless, the computer, the Internet, and other technologies (for example, One Laptop Per Child project) might eventually displace the pencil because they will be more effective for education, for collaboration, sharing, and recording. We will see.

Such a simple and perfect design - it will be a sad loss, but it seems inevitable.

Links:
History of pencils
The last word on the written word
Don't write off the pencil just yet
Faber-Castell History of the pencil
How much information 2003

Next post: the fork.

A dining room chair

I've been wondering about the origins of everyday artifacts in my home.

Take the chair. I have six dining room chairs in Danish Modern style in my home. Quite a popular style a few years ago I'm told. I've tried to find out something about the origin of my chairs. They are simple in style, made of solid teak or rosewood, with a seat with a simple attached cushion. No arms, but a back tilted a little with two slats. I haven't found anything specific. I did find out that Danish Modern got its start during the war, when designers were seeking a way to shape a rational and bright future. To me it is a very warm, inviting, and unpretentious style, but today Modern seems to have become the very opposite: quite stark and pretentious. Anyway, Edgar Kauffman, Jr., a style guru in postwar New York City is responsible for introducing the designs to America, where they caught on quickly with young moderns. Seems that the young moderns weren't actually that radical since they liked the idea that they didn't have to defend their choice to their parents and in-laws, because of the traditional materials and craftmanship (I guess they weren't into the idea of sit-ins (see below) either). A zenith for Danish Modern was reached by the mid 60s, but by then the designs had become part of Western consciousness, and the chairs themselves are collectibles today.

The chair must be one of the most successful artifacts of all time. I've never been to a house without a chair, and never not been offered to have a seat - in a chair - unless someone wanted to get rid of me.

Chair design hasn't changed in over 4600 years. My chairs look pretty much like the oldest existing chair, give or take an armrest: that of Queen Hetepheres I of Ancient Egypt. Her chair was unearthed (and reconstructed from the gilding; the wood had turned to dust) from a tomb in Giza and dated to 2600 BC.

It's strange that there seem to be no earlier examples of chairs. There would have been a lot of tired feet and bums. And surely the chair didn't spring into existence complete with resplendent gilding. There are actually earlier illustrations and carvings of people using chairs, but ancient nomadic culture had no need for chairs - of the day, whatever they might have been. The folding portable beach/picnic chair had to wait a few millenia to evolve so wasn't available in the local shops. So there's a gap in the fossil chair record. What environmental change led the stool to evolve into a chair, if that was indeed the route?

It's also strange that it took so long for the chair to really catch on. Up until the Renaissance the great masses were still not allowed apparently to nail a back or arms to their stools. Perhaps Queen Hetepheres had more influence than just good taste in furniture. Being mother of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, she must have had a bit of clout when it came to establishing the Secret Society of Chair Enthusiasts - sworn to hide and protect the chair from the masses.

Even the etymology of chair reveals its cultural pedigree (as etymology so often does). The word chair comes from the ancient Greek kathedrā (kata-, down + hedrā, seat), which is also the origin of cathedral, the principal church of a bishop, that holds his seat or throne. And of course, even today a chair is a leader.

The chair hasn't been successful in all environments. Many cultures don't use chairs, preferring instead the ground, floor, rugs, mats, or cushions. But the chair has been so successful in Western cultures that it has set up a feeling in me, and probably most people, as strong as an instinct that it is wrong (dirty?, uncultured?) to sit on the floor. And so it is counterculture to sit on the floor and to have sit-ins. Or perhaps it's not an instinct but a physical need for comfort, presuming our Western bodies have evolved and changed to need chairs. In either case, the future of chairs is assured. I'm not sure what could replace them.

So, I've been unable to find out precisely how the chair evolved. The oldest existing chair was already perfectly adapted to its environment, and apparently the environment hasn't changed that much in 4600 years. Still, there have been some stunning adaptations in the chair. I think my favourite example is the swivel chair, specialized for the office space - and impressing foreign dignitaries. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, invented the swivel chair. I can see him now, spinning around behind the Oval Office desk in front of a stunned leader of another nation. That would say power! This didn't last long. General George S. Patton apparently said "No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair."

Scandinavian furniture (read IKEA or the older incarnation Danish Modern) might seem popular, but the pinnacle of chair evolution must be the monobloc chair that adorns almost every patio in the world. Every 70 seconds a new monobloc comes into existence by a single press, and even the presses have multiplied around the world (in Russia, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico, USA, Italy, France, Germany, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, and China). At $3 a piece, they've found their niche and they aren't moving.

Other key adaptions include the comfy chair, the recliner, the folding chair. What is your favourite chair?

So, how did the chairs get into my house? Something made an ancient Egyptian decide that chairs were indispensable, eventually the secret couldn't be contained, and now we can't imagine life without them. For dining, it's unthinkable to not sit in a chair. I must have chairs.

Links:
Chair of Hetepheres
History of Egyptian Furniture
monobloc chairs
Scandinavian Modern

Next post: the pencil.

Rules of the game

A common definition of an artifact is "an object produced or shaped by human craft, especially a tool, weapon, or ornament of archaeological or historical interest." [American Heritage Dictionary @ answers.com]

Of course, they also add that an artifact is "an inaccurate observation, effect, or result, ..." which might end up being more accurate here.

Archaeologists take a broad view: An artifact is "any object which has been modified, fashioned, or manufactured according to a set of humanly imposed attributes, including tools, weapons, ornaments, utensils, houses, buildings, etc. Artefacts are the basic components of material culture." [Archaeology Dictionary @ answers.com] I guess when you're faced with such an overwhelming paucity of actual data to study in your chosen field you have to take a broad view. I like that last bit about material culture though and I see no reason why modern man-made things aren't also artifacts under these definitions.

I'll be concerned with household artifacts. By that I mean man-made items that are typically found and used within a normal home - my home. But I think I need a few more rules to clarify what I mean. I actually mean mass-produced objects rather than one-offs such as artwork. Types of object rather than instances (so a book as a type is an artifact, whereas The Selfish Gene is an instance and won't be catalogued separately). And I mean movable objects (that can be moved by a single person). From simple to complex, from common to obscure, I don't mind. Let's see how that goes.

One last rule, more to keep my time commitment down, is to choose the next artifact to investigate at the end of writing a posting.

And a disclaimer. I’m not an archaeologist. Just an amateur observing and cataloguing a house.
This is for fun so don’t expect any semblance of objectivity.

With the rules of the game set, we move on to the first substantive post, finally!

Next post: the dining room chair.

An idea

I heard the other day that 95% of the things in a typical home have come by sea on a container ship. Actually, in my case, at one time, is was all of the things. When I moved my family to the UK 8 years ago, a quarter-container worth of things was shipped across the ocean. All of our possessions in an 8 x 8.6 x 10 foot block! Doesn't sound like much. I think we could fill the whole container now. Possessions multiply.

Anyway, I've been wondering about all these artifacts - man-made things - that fill my home and my life. They're all things that I wanted at one time. Most are functional, many beautiful, some fun, a few useless, and the odd one indispensable. But they all somehow got into my life. How did they do this? And the ones I don't care for anymore? They're still here too. Why is it so difficult to part with things? Maybe it's not so hard. There are two kinds of people: packrats and ebay addicts. In both cases, the things live on.

Artifacts have a hold on me. They resist disposal. Of course, the strange thing is that I could get by without most of them, but who wants to (in the First World)? I mean, if pressed, I could play "desert island artifacts", but let's leave that for another post.

Artifacts seem to have a hold on everybody. Artifacts are like insects: they've been successfully surviving in almost every environment on the earth, which has humans of course, and they are very plentiful. Could the total mass of artifacts be greater than the total mass of insects? They've been more successful in the First World than in the Third World, but everybody has artifacts.

Man changes artifacts. But is man really in control of the process, or are we merely part of the blind reproductive mechanism of artifacts. If you didn't know that a human designer was involved, could you think that artifacts evolved through mutation and natural selection similar to biological organisms?

Artifacts change man. They enable the human population to increase, which raises the demand for more artifacts. So, they fuel, and perhaps even create, consumerism and globalization.

Back to my home. The cargo container ship made we realize my fascination with how artifacts are made, and how they affect our lives. The idea of this blog is to do a bit of amateur neo-archaeology (an oxymoron?) on the artifacts I know best - the ones in my home. I want to explore how everyday household things have evolved over time, mutated, selected for the changing environment, and reproduced. So, I intend to go through all the artifacts in my home one at a time. Will a coherent picture emerge? I don't know, but at least I'll be able to work out how much cash I would make on ebay, and then move to a desert island.

Next entry: the rules of the game.

Links: The 20-Ton Packet, Wired 7.10