Fork, from a flatware dessert service

Porcelain was still a luxury object in the 18th century, and these pieces of porcelain-handled flatware show the ostentatious, if impractical, use of the material (also seen on the handle of a small sword on view in Gallery 340). Like the cup and saucer shown here, they were meant to show the high development of porcelain as a German industry. Part of a dessert service for twelve, they were, according to the donor, given as a diplomatic gift from the Queen of Saxony to Prince Wladislav Lubienski of Poland. After the Second World War, as the formation of the U.S.S.R. was in progress, the owners transferred the service to American Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane, whose widow gave the service, in its original leather traveling cases, to the MIA.