A remarkable artifact has emerged from the past. During the restoration of the Washington Bedchamber, the Preservation team uncovered an 18th-century fork behind the north wall of the adjacent north dressing room. Hidden for centuries, this piece of domestic history offers a rare and personal connection to the Washingtons’ life at Mount Vernon.
The Fork: Form and Function
The fork itself is a striking example of 18th-century craftsmanship. It features a green-stained ivory pistol-grip handle, a steel body, and a silver ferrule at the joint—details that speak to both quality and style.
Interestingly, both tines are bent, with one curved outward and the other shaped into a hook. This suggests that the fork may have been intentionally repurposed, bent into a hook, before it slipped through the cracks—quite literally.
(George Brown / MVLA)
Tied to Washington’s Orders
Thanks to records, we know that Washington ordered cutlery of this type multiple times during the 1760s and early 1770s. In June 1766, he requested from Robert Cary & Company in London:
“1 dozn green Ivory Tables swell bosom Forks…1/2 dozn pr green Ivory Tables [knives]” — procured by Mary Scott & Son Cutlery
Further orders followed in 1771 and 1772, including:
“2 dozn Green handd Knives [and] 2 dozn Do Do Forks,”
“2 dozn pr large Chinese green Ivory Table knives & Forks, to suit those sent last year by Thos Squire.” (Thomas Squire was a cutler working in London at the time.)
These forks and knives likely graced the Washingtons' table during the height of their entertaining at Mount Vernon. As tastes and styles changed, particularly by the 1790s when the family purchased newer cutlery, earlier sets like these would have been placed in storage—possibly in the upstairs garret (or lumber room), a space above the bedchamber that was used for storing household goods.
(George Brown / MVLA)
The way that the tines of this fork appear purposely bent suggests it was repurposed, perhaps bent into a hook to retrieve something or for another similar purpose that led to it falling from the garret behind the plaster of the wall in the north dressing room.
Though we may never know its full journey, this modest utensil provides a rare and intimate connection to the material world and daily life of the Washington household.