The resulting knife, the Carvel Hall, soon went on sale nationally-and became the first common kind of steak knife you could buy. The findings were clear: People wanted an elegant, sharp knife to cook their meat, and they wanted it at home, rather than a restaurant. The company was also involved in manufacturing cutlery at the time, which is perhaps why the gift from Culver proved particularly fruitful for the Briddell family, especially after Charles Jr.'s brother, Tom, saw the delicate craftsmanship of the knife and realized it made more sense on the dinner table than as a tool for opening letters.Īccording to a 1953 article from the The Salisbury Times, Tom Briddell asked Culver for both a set of six steak knives and a case to put them in, then did a nationwide survey of the potential market. It was already a quickly growing company by the mid-1940s, with the company's Crisfield, Maryland factory building equipment during World War II. was a man who chose blacksmithing over farming as a teenager, eventually turning his preferred career path into a namesake company.
Briddell Jr.īriddell's father, Charles Sr. Culver in 1946, was originally a gift for businessman Charles D. That letter opener, designed by a Maryland machinist named Paul C. In fact, the modern steak knife didn't truly make itself known until after World War II.Ī device of simple design and surprising sharpness, the turning point for the steak knife came in the form of a reconstituted letter opener. Obviously, sharp knives never really went away-people in the kitchen needed blades with an edge to them if they were going to prepare food.īut what might be surprising to an observer is that steak knives, at least in terms of how we consider them in the modern day, aren't old innovations with centuries of history. Suddenly, a lot of sharp knives got pretty dull. The introduction of the fork into European culture changed the way we interacted with knives, just as it did with napkins.Ĭardinal Richelieu was a powerful, influential man, and his knife-dulling approach gained enough currency that in 1669, 27 years after he died, King Louis XIV issued a decree making pointed knives illegal in France, whether inside the home or out in public. Often, medieval cultures would eat meals using a single knife-their own, which they brought with them to dinner-and their hands. See, knife blades were long the primary way that people ate food-unlike napkins, which weren't always a given, they were always a key element of the meal. He had his knife edges rounded, the legend goes, in an effort to discourage bad behavior by his guests. Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis, the Duke of Richelieu and Fronsac-or Cardinal Richelieu for short-became annoyed by table manners of those eating with pointed knives, which were used as a way of picking teeth. The reason for this goes back nearly 400 years, and involves an annoyed French clergyman. As blade designs go, it's pretty weak-sauce, and intentionally so. Before there was the steak knife, there was the table knife, or the butter knife.
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