Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500-2005

Eating is a social ritual. From dinner dates to everyday suppers, casual picnics to lavish feasts, dining brings people together for far more than satisfying the needs of the body. For centuries, cutlery has served as extensions of our hands, enriching how we experience food and the act of eating. Knives, forks, and spoons come between hand and mouth, articulating the experience of dining.

Accompanying an exhibition at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (May 5 - October 29, 2006), Feeding Desire is the first book to showcase the Museum's astonishing permanent collection of American and European cutlery. Complementing and expanding on the content of the exhibition, seven original essays, accompanied by over two hundred lavish color and black-and-white illustrations, relate the surprisingly different histories of the knife, spoon, and fork, and reveal how cutlery has influenced food, fashion, design, mobility, hygiene, and consumption over the centuries. In addition, Feeding Desire looks toward the future of the tools of the table as we progress into the twenty-first century.