Objects

Silver coloured, plated sugar nips. The nips consist of two elongated, interconnected arms. Both arms are decorated with an art déco geometric motif. The decoration consists of two simple grooves (thinnings) running along the edges of the arms. In the upper part (before the joint), the grooves are connected to each other by a horizontal line with bevelled edges. The end of each arm is almond-shaped and deprived of decoration.

Sugar nips belong to cutlery that is rarely used today. This utensil has fallen out of common use because the form in which sugar is available in stores has changed. In the 19th century, it was purchased not in the granulated form we know today but in cone-forms commonly referred to as "sugarloaves". The weight of the sugarloaves varied from a few to several kilograms. The most commonly purchased for domestic use were sugarloaves weighing approximately 5 kg. After bringing the cone home, it was broken into smaller pieces. The nips were used to extract fragments of the crushed sugarloaves from the sugar bowl.

While sugar nips can still be found in stores today (although they are now primarily used for picking up sugar cubes rather than fragments chipped from a sugarloaf), many other specialised cutlery items that were used before the war are no longer in use. The main reason for their disappearance is the change in eating habits, both in terms of the dishes we consume and the manner in which we do so. It would be difficult for us today to identify, for example, a special knife and fork for consuming crayfish (which are now protected), forks designed specifically for watermelon, oranges, grapes, or characteristic forks (in the form of an openwork spatula) for serving sardines. All of this cutlery can now only be seen in pre-war catalogues of their manufacturers or in museum collections.

MF