Puiforcat - Solid Silver Cutlery Set For 12 People Circa 1900

Elegant menagere in the Louis XVI style by PUIFORCAT in Paris.
It is composed of 12 table forks, 12 table spoons and 10 tea spoons in the Louis XVI style, decorated with ribboned branches, falls and laurel garlands held by a fibula with pleated ribbon. The reverse of the spatula is decorated with the CJ monogram finely engraved in English letters with foliate scrolls. 

Circa 1900. 

Presented in a case marked PUIFORCAT. 

Marks 
•    Minerve 1er titre (solid silver 950/1000), 
•    Master goldsmith: EP and a desk penknife in a lozenge for PUIFORCAT.

Dimensions
•    Forks - Length: 21.2 cm; width (at fork): 2.2 cm.
•    Spoons - Length: 21.4 cm; width (at spoon): 4.2 cm. 
•    Tea spoons - Length: 13.9 cm ;

Net weight: 2653 grams.

This model from PUIFORCAT is a syncretism of the Guirlande and Rubans models, appearing in the PUIFORCAT catalogues of the 1900s under reference numbers 40 and 31 under the name "LOUIS XVI" (and reproduced in the reference book by David ALLAN Le Couvert et la coutellerie de table française au XIX^e siècle, Faton editions). It is part of the fashion inaugurated in the 19th century for past styles. Rarely copied but rather reinterpreted, they reflect a taste for history that is much more widely manifested than in the decorative arts. In cutlery in particular, past styles are more of an inspiring idea than a model to copy. Thus, "Renaissance" or "Gothic" models are invented which never existed, or shell models, for example, are classified as "Louis XIV" even though they were fashionable until the end of the 18th century.