Drawing, Design for Fish Servers

While there is no evidence that this design for a Fish Serving Set was produced during Knox’s lifetime, in 1995 John Jesse, the collector who purchased this pair of drawings from Knox’s pupil Denise Wren, had a set produced from the drawings by Alan Mudd, an English enameller whose original design for a silver, parcel-gilt, and enameled Fish Slice was acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2008.
This design drawing for a fish knife and fork, with each element shown from above and in side-profile, contains series of cross-sectional “slices” of different sections of each piece. Knox has included a series of small letter notations which show how each element of construction in one view of the fork or knife corresponds to the other. A cross-section of the neck of the fork, where the decorative knot-work recesses as the thicker central band rises toward the prongs of the fork, features the handwritten notation “section on CC [cross-cut]” underneath.
The openwork interlace decoration on the fork and knife, with the intended negative spaces articulated with the help of light, diagonal hatch-lines in the background, is more angular than in the previous design drawing for spoons, forks and knives. This interlace decoration would have required hand-filing out the negative space after casting, the resulting piece born of the mix of industrialized production and handwork which characterized the late 19th century Arts & Crafts movement. Unlike the decorative registers in the middle- and upper-portions of these pieces, Knox’s cross-sections of the lower sections of the handles show no three-dimensional modeling or other plastic ornamentation; a hand-written notation in the lower-right margin notes that the handles were meant to be constructed “of ivory or other colored material.”

Drawing, Design for Fish Servers; Designed by Archibald Knox (British, 1864 - 1933); graphite on white wove paper; 21.6 × 30.5 cm (8 1/2 in. × 12 in.); Museum purchase from the Members' Acquisitions Fund of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum; 2017-16-2