Today the most common place setting items are:

• Teaspoon
• Place Spoon
• Place Fork
• Salad Fork
• Place Knife

The most common additions to the basic five piece place settings are:

• Butter Spreader
• Cocktail Fork
• Cream Soup Spoon
• Iced Teaspoon

Fork Identification Guide

The lengths in inches are average lengths. The items by different manufacturers and different patterns vary greatly. When you are trying to locate matching items for your pattern always measure the length in inches to the nearest eight of an inch.

• Cocktail Fork
  6" to 7"
  A small trident shaped fork. Occasionally the tines on the cocktail fork are barbed. They are used for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres & fruit salads. A Cocktail fork is used as a pickle fork or a lemon fork in services that lack these small serving forks.

• Dinner Fork (Hollow Handle Dinner Fork)
  7-1/2" to 8"
  This is a very large fork for dinner.

• Grill Fork
  This fork is popular in services from the 1930's and '40's. It is a long fork with small short salad fork sized tines. It is usually paired with grill knives. Grill items seem to be most common in silver plated patterns.

• Ice Cream Fork
  5" to 5-1/2"
  This is the original "spork." It is a spoon with short tines at the tip. You probably will not find this in modern services. If you do find one in a modern service, check it for the possibility of being a modified teaspoon. This is pretty much the same as Terrapin Forks or Ramekin Forks.

• Lunch Fork
  6-1/2" to 7-1/2"
  Usually this is the same as the place fork. In older services it is smaller than the place and dinner forks.

• Pastry Fork
  5" to 6-1/2"
  In most services this is the same as a salad fork. It is basically a salad fork with a notch cut out of the top of the left tine.

• Place Fork
  6-3/4" to 7-1/2"
  This is the standard fork at a place setting.

• Salad Fork (new style tines)
  6" to 6 -1/2"
  The middle tine is elongated and often has a decorative design cut into it.

• Salad Fork (old style tines)
  6" to 6-1/2"
  The tines all stop at the same length on the fork.

• Salad Fork (T-bar)
  6" to 6-1/2"
  The all (or some) of the tines are connected by a "bar" on the fork. T-bars sometimes occur on serving forks.

• Strawberry Fork
  4" to 5"
  This unusual item is a small fork with very long tines. There are usually three tines that are about a third of the length of the entire fork.