This spectacular table cutlery set (faqueiro in Portuguese), madeof gold, survives with its original knife box (estojo de faqueiro).Produced in Lisbon in the second half of the 1740s, its remarkablesurvival—given the princely material from which it is made, totallingaround 1,400 grams of gold—offers a powerful testamentto the conspicuous consumption of gold objects, particularly forthe dining table, at the Portuguese royal court.1
Knife boxes usually stood in pairs on sideboards, allowingservants could lay out fresh cutlery for each course. Given thechoice of material, this set was intended for a more familiar, intimatedining context, serving only six diners.The rectangular knife box, with its characteristically Baroqueserpentine-shaped front and flat sloping lid, is covered externally incrimson silk velvet—a colour usually reserved for royalty—and lined internally with forest-green silk velvet, both trimmed with silverbraid. Fitted with exuberant cast and chased silver fittings (handle,lock plate and latch, and two hinges at the back), the box revealseighteen compartments arranged across four tiers when opened.It contains one set of six knives, six spoons, and six forks.2With the exception of the knives—with their steel blades andhandles made from sheet gold worked in repoussé, chased andengraved, and filled with a resinous cutler’s cement—the solid-goldspoons and forks were forged from ingots, then finely chased andengraved with a burin. The openwork stems of both spoons andforks were chisel-cut, while the shield-shaped reserves at the endsof the handles (on the reverse), typically intended for monograms—or, more likely, the owner’s heraldry—remain blank.According to family tradition, the set and box were giftedby King John V (r. 1706–1750) to one of his mistresses living nearEstremoz. This claim is not implausible. Gold objects were strictlyreserved for the monarch and the royal family, and the style—beautifullymerging the earlier Portuguese Baroque repertoire, FrenchRégence ornament, and the newly introduced rocaille motifs—pointsto the final years of John V’s reign. This transitional idiom combines the characteristic masks(on the lower parts of the forks’ tines and spoons’ bowls, wherethey meet the handle, and most prominently on the box’s latch)familiar from Portuguese Baroque display silver around 1700,combined with the Régence trellis (quadrillage) pattern and theexperimental rocaille ornament—previously unseen in Portuguesedecorative arts—that would become prevalent under the king’ssuccessor, Joseph I (r. 1750–1777).As the pieces bear no marks, the identity of the accomplishedsilversmith responsible for this gold cutlery set is difficult to establishwith certainty. Comparisons with the rare surviving goldobjects from this pivotal phase of experimentation—spanning theclosing years of John V’s reign, the king’s death in 1750, and thedevastation of Lisbon in the 1755 earthquake—suggest the workshopof Manuel Roque Ferrão (fl. 1728–1785), one of Lisbon’s mostprolific silversmiths. His long career and documented corpus ofwork encompass the principal decorative styles of the eighteenthcentury, from the late Baroque and the height of the Rococo tothe early onset of Neoclassicism.
HMC
2 With regard to the gold alloys, observation under a stereomicroscope revealed, exclusively on the knives, the presence of grey-coloured metallic inclusions. X-ray fluorescence analysisidentified these inclusions as consisting of osmium and iridium. The presence of this type of inclusion indicates the use of alluvial gold in the manufacture of the alloys.