Set of six forks (part of a set) 1767-71 Louis-Joseph Lenhendrick The tooled leather box contains six couvertsthe French term for two or more matched pieces of flatwarewhich in this instance each comprise a fork, spoon, and knife. Six identical couverts housed in a similar box are also in the Museum’s collection. It is not known for whom these thirty-six pieces of flatware were made because the coats of arms that decorated each fork, knife, and spoon have been erased. However, the two boxes are decorated on the lids with the Noailles arms, suggesting that a member of that distinguished aristocratic family owned the cutlery in the eighteenth century.The designs of the flatware are unusually elaborate and ambitious, especially in the use of openwork in the stems of the fork and spoon, and in the molded and chased decoration of the knife blades. The amount of work required by the complexity of the designs marks these as especially fine pieces of silver cutlery. The two sets date from th