For Jean Puiforcat, a fork was clearly not too mundane an object to escape contemplation. In the 1920s, the silversmith sought the "ideal flatware," redesigning tines and applying geometry and mathematical proportions to tableware. Teapots, coffee pots, tumblers, even a biscuit tin in silver and lapis lazuli: at Puiforcat, even afternoon tea deserved a few calculations.
How many tines does a fork actually need? It is a question that had never kept us awake at night. Jean Puiforcat, however, had given it some thought.
In the 1920s, the silversmith embarked on a quest for the “ideal flatware”. For the Chantaco collection, he reduced the number of tines on certain forks, refusing to let them run simply parallel. Every curve, every length, and every proportion had to answer to the movement of the hand as much as to the eye. In his world, setting the table began to look suspiciously like a geometry problem.
This obsession did not emerge from nowhere. The Puiforcat story began in Paris in 1820, in the cutlery workshop of Joseph-Baptiste Fuchs. Émile Puiforcat, his nephew, would later give his name to the house, registering his famous pocketknife maker's mark in 1857. Then came Louis-Victor Tabouret, husband to Laure Puiforcat, who amassed a vast collection of antique silverware whose forms became enduring references for the house. This collection would later find its home in the Louvre Museum.
Jean Puiforcat belonged to the fourth generation. Yet rather than merely reproducing the family’s past, he brought silversmithing into the Art Deco movement. Spheres, cylinders, cones, straight lines, and mathematical proportions became his vocabulary. His Loya service, created in 1927, pushed this logic to its limit: near-architectural geometric volumes in silver, softened by the dark wood of the handles.
And then, there is the biscuit box.
In 1922, Jean Puiforcat presented a solid silver box punctuated with lapis lazuli. A domestic, almost trivial object became one of his playground for Art Deco experimentation. A century later, Puiforcat continues to reissue it, notably replacing the historic lapis with jade in a contemporary interpretation.
In 2025, artist Rachel Whiteread designed a service for Puiforcat starting from pieces of corrugated cardboard, hand-folded and rolled. It was then up to the artisans to replicate in solid silver the folds, ridges, and imperfections of the most ordinary material imaginable.
Taste
Paris · 1820 · Jean Puiforcat · The ideal flatware · Art Deco · Geometry at the table · Silverware · Solid silver · Lapis lazuli · Biscuit box · Chantaco · Loya 1927 · Spheres & cylinders · French savoir-faire · The Louvre · Pocketknife mark
