I’ve always loved the evocative air that surrounds traveling utensil sets, from my first Boy Scout knife/fork/spoon (excellent) up to the latest Snow Peak titanium kit (lightweight, and excellent except for the knife, which is comically useless on anything tougher than butter).
Along the way I’ve owned others and tested many more. Some were good, some bad—don’t get me started on the unholy abomination that is the “spork,” a failure at being either an effective spoon or a fork.
But no traveling set I’ve tried could be described as elegant.
Until now, that is.
I was down one of those internet rabbit holes that are impossible to trace backwards, but somehow wound up on eBay looking at an interesting silver-plated kettle incorporating a spirit burner, from Barker Brothers of Birmingham, England, a highly respected 19th-century maker. It looked like something that would be useful for our place in Fairbanks to keep tea and coffee water close to a boil. Intrigued, I searched for more of their products—and about halfway down page two a title jumped off the page and hit me between the eyes: “Victorian gentleman’s traveling silverware set.”
Inside a worn, leather-covered, hinged wood case, nestled in blue velvet and satin, lay a beautiful, bead-edged, full-sized silver-plated fork and tablespoon, accompanied by a steel knife with a faux-bone handle. The pièce-de-résistance was a silver-plated napkin ring—because, after all, what kind of savage travels with his own silverware but no napkin ring?
The ad noted that the case had an issue with the catch, and, perhaps because of that, the price was astonishingly affordable. Done.
In person it was just as glorious as in the photos, and a two-minute tweak with my needle-nosed pliers had the catch working fine.
Roseann’s reaction was exactly the same as that of several friends: “That is so you.” Accompanied by just the slightest smirk and eye roll.
I don’t care. As long as I’m not blowing through my vehicle’s GVWR, what’s the harm in adding a bit of class to the camp ware? We already carry pint glasses made of real glass in preference to the plastic things that go all hazy, and ceramic coffee mugs rather than tin.
I wonder if I could talk Roseann into a modest set of Wedgwood traveling china?
