Reviews

Cutlery perfection! Beautifully wrapped and speedily delivered- thank you!

Probably due to age, I’m difficulty with electronic communication. I had to contact you to place an order by phone. On doing this, my order was dealt with in the most helpful and friendly manner.and my order was received by me without any delays. THANK YOU.

Beautiful cutlery that feels very tactile, also excellent workmanship. 👍

Superb product just what I wanted good Sheffield stainless steel, love them.

Cutlery perfection!

Wanted to add to our wedding present set after 18 years. Brilliant that we could get the identical spoons . Thank you!!!!!!

Beautiful, thank you.

A good quality knife which cuts well

Wonderful pieces of cutlery. Sometimes you need special knife and fork to improve a meal, apart from that my father had some when I was a boy.

When I saw them online they took me back to my childhood, I'm 79, I had to have them. They are so beautiful and lovely to use. My daughter was surprised at the price but she could see the quality. I'm very happy with them.

Good quality, bought to help arthritic hands, handles are warm to touch, larger than most stainless steel which I wanted and sit well in the hand. So far are coming out of dishwasher nice and shiny, very pleased.

Hi I have been trying to find these knifes for a while and so please to have found you great product and even better customer service keep it up and I hope to build my cutlery set bit by bit also Chrismas presents for family thanks

Lovely quality fruit forks, Harley pattern, stainless steel. Very please with these.

Exactly as described… Just about the right size and nice to hold. Very large hands might wish to try a different style though. It would be good to offer some of the most popular styles with a left handed option. Engraved initials would be another great additional service. It’s nice to buy British! Suggest packaging outer might need to be more robust although very nicely wrapped.

When I had my cream handled knife and fork in my hands I knew why I had bought them, perfection. I remembered when my mother and father had cutlery like these and thought I would have some too, I'm 79, not too late I think. Thank you for such a quality product.

This is our second time buying this cutlery to add to what we already have, it's just quite simply perfect, obviously everyone's tastes are different but we just love them & the quality for every day use makes every meal special, many thanks David

Excellent quality.

Excellent product nicely balanced very good 👍

Stunningly beautiful carving set, delightful to handle, strong and sharp. Delighted thanks ☺️

Christmas present for my daughter and son in law. Just what they were looking for. I’ll be ordering 4 more very soon.
Happy New Year.

Great cutlery. Matches my Early English originally supplied by Osborne really well.

Lovely spoons and a lovely addition to my set.

Beautifuly crafted little steak knife

The best service and high quality product, adding cutlery to my existing Elia Revere collection.

Beautiful

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Superb quality, speedy delivery. Delighted, thank you.

I bought it for my daughters wedding gift because I had always wanted one and she loved it so I am happy

Disappointingly small. The ‘rattail’ turned out to be an incised pattern not a proper rattail.
My search continues.

Dear Marcus Barbor
Thank you for taking the time to review your cutlery. We are sorry for your disappointment, however, no one makes the raised rattail – or ‘proper rattail’ that you are looking for.
The traditional English “rattail” (or “rat-tail”) fork and spoon pattern is one of the oldest surviving flatware forms in Britain, dating from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The “tail” itself was originally not decorative at all — it was structural.
For early spoons especially, the bowl and handle were often forged separately and then joined together. The raised rib on the reverse — the rat-tail — reinforced that junction and concealed or strengthened the soldered join.
Forks evolved slightly differently, but the same principle applied in many early examples:
• The tines/head were forged separately from the stem.
• The handle/stem was then fire-welded or brazed onto the fork head.
• The raised “tail” on the reverse strengthened the weak point where the neck met the fork head.
• On hand-forged examples, the rat-tail was often hand-drawn with hammer work after joining.
Early English Hanoverian forks from roughly 1700–1750 commonly show a very pronounced rat-tail because the construction genuinely needed reinforcement.
By the Georgian period, metallurgy and forging improved enough that the structural need largely disappeared. The rat-tail gradually became shallower and then decorative only. Around the later 18th century, many Hanoverian forks lost the rat-tail entirely.
Most modern “rattail” cutlery is made completely differently.
Modern stainless rattail forks are usually:
• stamped from a single blank,
• rolled and pressed in dies,
• with the “tail” formed by coining/pressing rather than forging.
The tail today is usually just a shallow pressed ridge because:
1. there is no structural joint to reinforce,
2. deep forging is expensive,
3. modern stainless alloys are much stronger than early wrought silver or iron.
Traditional hand-forged silver rattail patterns still exist today from specialist makers, but they are niche luxury production rather than mainstream manufacture.
If you are searching for traditional Rattail teaspoons (you bought 6 from us) with the raised ridge-you will need to search in the antique market.
There isn’t a single cut-off date when manufacturing techniques changed over, because methods overlapped for decades and varied by maker. But broadly:
• Fully hand-forged two-piece silver rattail forks remained common through the 18th century.
• High-end Sheffield and London silversmiths still used forged-and-joined construction into the mid-19th century.
• Industrial drop-stamping and die-forging increasingly replaced them from roughly the 1840s–1880s.
• By the early 20th century, almost all commercial EPNS and stainless rattail cutlery was one-piece stamped construction with decorative tails only.
So the “last” true structural rat-tail forks were probably being made by traditional silversmith workshops into the late Victorian or Edwardian era, but mainstream production had effectively moved to one-piece manufacture by about 1900–1920.
One useful clue when examining antique pieces:
• On genuinely old hand-forged forks, the rat-tail is usually asymmetrical, deeply raised, and organically blended into the neck.
• On modern stamped versions, it tends to be perfectly centred, shallow, and mechanically uniform.
The very pronounced rat-tail seen on early English silver is essentially evidence of the transition from forged multi-part flatware to industrial one-piece manufacture.
I hope this helps inform your search for a ‘proper Rattail’.
We do have a 30-day no-questions-asked returns policy. Your order was placed 30th March 2026, so slightly longer than this time period; however, we are happy to take the spoons back if you no longer want them. Please contact us directly to return them and we will issue a refund provided they are unused, in a new condition, and re-packaged accordingly.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Lincoln House Cutlery.

Highest standard and so comfortable to hold and use.

Hi Maureen,
Thank you so much for leaving us a 5 star review - we’re over the moon!
Thank you for shopping with us and we hope to see you again soon :-)
Lincoln House Cutlery

This was a gift for a chef friend but I opened it to admire it before I gave it to him. It was truely a thing of beauty! When he received it his message simply said ‘Best Pressie Ever!’

Hi, Thank you so much for leaving us a 5 star review - we’re over the moon!
Delighted that your chef friend was delighted with the Forge de Laguiole Butter Knife - and they are right; it is a thing of beauty. I have one at home as well and love it - use it daily and it's always a joy!
Thank you for shopping with us and we hope to see you again soon :-)
Lincoln House Cutlery

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