Dutch silver serving fork

Dutch silver serving fork

François Marcus Simons

The Hague, 1786

147 grams; 29 cm long

The long, slightly curved handle widens towards the end. The fork has five sharp, tapering tines. Fully hallmarked on the back of the handle.

Silver bread serving forks are mainly found in England, where their use was somewhat less exceptional than in the Netherlands. As far as is known, no other Dutch bread serving forks are known or preserved. Perhaps we can therefore speak of a unique specimen. Whether it was used to serve bread or meat, this is a beautiful serving fork from the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

François Marcus Simons was born on 2 September 1750 to Marcus François Simons and Maria Emilia Palairet. François has been married twice. The first marriage in 1781 was to Johanna Dina Nieuwenhuysen, but she must have died before September 11, 1794, because then the second marriage took place with Hermina Johanna Nieuwenhuysen. On 18 November 1776 he appears in the oath book of the Hague silversmiths’ guild. François held board positions with the guild several times, as a dean, a sevenman and between 1790 and 1798 an assay master. He lived at the Hofsingel K.28. in The Hague, where he died at the age of 77 on August 26, 1828. Little has been written about François’ life except for the small biography by Voet Jr. He attributes the maker’s mark F.S in roman capitals and F.S in italics and in a rectangle, both to François Marcus Simons.

The prolific silversmith François Marcus Simons from The Hague was purveyor to King William I. In the Dutch years silversmiths from The Hague often supplied the monarch.

The first to make a silver supply was François Marcus Simons, who already in 1813, when William I had just returned from exile, supplied 84 pairs of spoons and forks. François delivered to the monarch until the year 1824. Simons was a service worker and mainly manufactured service items, such as casters, baskets, biscuit boxes, salt cellars, flatware, trays, tea and coffee sets, chestnut vases, bouilloires, etc. Simons was not only a silversmith but also a retailer. The extensive production is not exclusively by him: he also had designs carried out by other silversmiths. He commissioned a lot of silverware from various silversmiths from The Hague and stamped it accurately over the silversmith’s maker’s mark with his own maker’s mark FS, in order to meet the demand of his Hague clientele. Sometimes it is still possible to trace which silversmith delivered the silver object to Simons, such as Lodewijk Bouscholte and M. Auriot. The prolific silversmith François Marcus Simons from The Hague also used English examples and designs in the manufacture, such as salt cellars and tea sets. This clearly shows that he had a broad horizon and had a commercial eye for what his clients preferred, including many noble families.

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