The knives are little more than a slender metal wedge and the three-tined forks so narrow you can barely spear a green bean, but what Arne Jacobsen’s stainless steel flatware lacks in functionality, it makes up in futuristic style. That’s why it was featured in 2001. I own a set of this famous flatware, and have the backstory scoop on the most elegant utensils ever used in a science fiction film.
Designed in 1957 as part of Jacobsen’s down-to-the-smallest-detail plan for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, the cutlery was chosen by director Stanley Kubrick for a cameo role in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Visible for a few moments while the Jupiter Mission crew eat dinner and watch the news, Jacobsen’s space-age design is still available today. It ain’t cheap, but how else can you impress the new, improved generation of HAL supercomputers at your next dinner party?
