Every spring a few of the top kitchenware retailers and popular recipe sites come up with a list of their best silverware brands. They mull over aesthetics, compare weight and balance, and run tests to see how well the soup spoons perform.>
Each group picks its best flatware brands from major manufacturers and retailers. They use different criteria to make their selections and based on these factors come up with its top picks. We look at the 5 main factors these groups use to determine their choices and show how a small artisan-crafted flatware brand like ours compares to the best silverware brands in the world.
Style: When choosing flatware, you’ll want a style that complements your dinnerware and overall home décor. For example, if your home’s aesthetic is a modern farmhouse, choose a style of flatware that has the core elements of warmth and vintage charm.
Corsage flatware for a modern farmhouse aesthetic.
If your dining room and tabletop style lean toward contemporary and you love to showcase sculptural centerpieces and colorful artwork on the walls, a flatware set with artistic flair will suit your style. Similarly, if you prefer a modern minimalist aesthetic, you’ll want to pick a flatware set with sleek lines and a simple silhouette.
🍴INOX Artisans offers a variety of styles that are both practical and visually appealing.
Comfort: When considering the best flatware brands, comfort is a key factor in determining whether a flatware set makes the cut. It’s equally important when selecting flatware of your own. You don’t want a fork so heavy that you must put it down after every bite or handles too large to grasp comfortably. During meals, you want implements that are easy to use and feel comfortable in your hand.
Weight plays a key role when considering the comfort of utensils in hand. Just imagine the difference between drinking water from a paper cup versus drinking from a heavy glass. They may both hold the same amount of water, but the heavy glass offers a sense of quality and is much more satisfying to drink from.
In their search for the best flatware brands, Serious Eats made note of how much different dinner forks weighed. Below are weights of dinner forks from top silverware brands compared to our artisan-crafted Ridge flatware fork.
| Flatware Brand | Dinner Fork Weight |
| Laguiole | 49 grams |
| Zwilling | 51 grams |
| Lenox | 2.2 grams |
| Robert Welch | 81.1 grams |
| INOX Artisans | 84 grams |
🍴As you can see by this weight comparison, our handcrafted Ridge flatware fork had the most heft.
Ridge flatware feels significant, with balanced flatware pieces that are a pleasure to use.
Quality: When it comes to finding the right flatware set for your home, you want to look for flatware made from durable, quality materials. The best silverware brands are crafted from rust-resistant stainless steel.
The stainless steel used for flatware is an alloy, which includes a mixture of chromium and nickel. These two metals are rust-resistant and nickel adds strength and durability. Stainless steel flatware is made from either 18/10, 18/8, or 18/0 stainless steel. These numbers show the percentage of chromium and nickel, with the first number showing the percentage of chromium and the second showing the percentage of nickel.
🍴At INOX Artisans, we use 18/8 stainless steel to craft our artisanal flatware. This mixture is slightly softer than the 18/10 formula which makes it easier for our artisans to work with. In addition, 18/8 stainless steel is less sensitive to heat than other types of steel, has high anti-corrosion properties and strength, and is more cost-effective than 18/10 stainless steel.
We recommend handwashing the Celia gold flatware set to keep its beautiful finish for years to come.
Maintenance: When selecting the best silverware brands, another important factor to consider is how much effort goes into caring for the flatware. For example, flatware designs with natural wood handles need handwashing, with regular oil or wood cream treatments to keep the wood from drying out. While some of us don’t mind hand-washing flatware, when selecting the best flatware brands most groups looked for options that included making life easier, so they chose dishwasher-safe flatware sets.
🍴Our silverware selection is dishwasher safe but we recommend staying away from harsh or citrus-scented detergents to keep them from tarnishing. For our gold flatware and copper flatware, we do recommend handwashing to preserve the finish and to keep your handcrafted flatware looking its best for many years.
Affordability: In general, flatware isn’t a low-cost item. When we looked through the line-ups of best flatware brands, we noticed that many of the top overall picks were priced at $200 for a 20-piece set for 4 people. At the time of writing, one article listed their budget-friendly flatware pick at $65.
🍴At INOX Artisans, our handcrafted flatware sets are very affordable. Considering that each piece has been handmade, hand-polished, and hand-finished by skilled metal craftsmen, our most elaborate designs are priced well below $200. The average price of a 5-piece set is $30.
Conclusion:
Each spring, we look forward to seeing what some of the best silverware brands have to offer. While it’s a great way to see how our small artisan flatware brand compares with the top brands, it also reaffirms that handcrafted flatware provides a unique dining experience that manufactured products can’t.
When it comes to the 5 main factors used in the choice process, we’d like to add one more: memorability. Dining with friends and sharing food with family simply becomes a richer, more memorable experience when using artisan-crafted flatware. When you find the right artisanal flatware set in a style you love, you’ll look forward to using it for every occasion.
