THE STATE of the SPOON

Designers are rethinking the traditional look of knife, fork and spoon. New cutlery pieces range from sleekly sculptural to playful: spoons shaped like colored fish with checkerboard tails, and knives like sinuously curving bars of silver. High-priced styles are still fashioned of traditional silver and gold, but less expensive cutlery is now made of aluminum, brass, wrought iron and plastic.

Many of today’s cutlery designers come from a fashion or jewelry background and describe their flatware as “functional sculpture.” Izabel Lam, who creates undulating bronze and silver cutlery, apprenticed with fashion designers Geoffrey Beene and Calvin Klein. “A knife and fork must fit snugly into the hand. It’s just like designing clothes--they both must fit the moving body,” she explains.

But what about washing these miniature sculptures? Kirsten Hawthorne, a painter and photographer turned flatware artist, swears that her utensils of sterling, gold plate and sandblasted plexiglass are dishwasher-safe. But some of these avant-garde creations cost up to $110 apiece; it may be prudent to wash this new cutlery the old-fashioned way.