The Toothpick

Knopf: 2007.

9780307266361

As the holiday celebrations get underway, ponder a moment on the small implement bent on prizing an echo of the feast from between your teeth. Henry Petroski was so intrigued by the toothpick that he has written more than 400 pages about its technological and cultural evolution, heavily spiced with historical anecdote (The Toothpick, Knopf, 2007).

Chapter titles give the flavour — see 'The tragic heiress'; 'Talking round a toothpick'; 'The fatal martini'; 'The butler did it'.

Credit: COLLECTION OF H. PETROSKI

The toothpick's history stretches back some two million years, as indicated by scored hominid fossil teeth. The Tibetans integrated toothpicks into their jewellery. And in case you ever need to know, New England's Charles Forster invented the first automatic toothpick-making machine in 1869.

Toothpicks over the ages were usually made of metal or wood; goose or porcupine quills were convenient too. Pliny the Younger advised against vulture feathers because “they cause a bad smell”, and recommended instead the needle-like bones of a hare.

Toothpicking has been victim to both social censure and prescribed etiquette. Pictured here is a Japanese lady from the Meiji era, grasping a toothpick with her fingers held in the accepted pattern.

Happily, the modern toothbrush has barely dented the popularity enjoyed by the toothpick over millennia.