Chopsticks have always fascinated me. They’re simple, elegant, portable, robust, and compact. And, once you’ve mastered the use of chopsticks – almost anything can be used as chopsticks – I remember Jackie Chan in one of his early movies, where his character was trying to have lunch in his office – unable to find any actual chopsticks to eat his noodles with, he gave up and used a pair of pencils, instead!
Although these days, it’s common in many Asian households to have an entire drawer-compartment overflowing with chopsticks, and the only problem you face is trying to match them up when you need a pair to eat lunch with, in times past, chopsticks were highly-prized personal possessions, and it was common for people to each have their own pair. In some countries – such as Japan – this is still the case. At a time when chopsticks were hard to come by, once you owned a pair – you carried it with you everywhere!
Such was the case, when this trousse was made!
What is a Chopstick Trousse?
‘Trousse’ is a French word, which variously means “kit”, “case” or a type of compartmentalised container, used for storing implements, tools or utensils required for a specific task. This is a chopstick trousse, and its task is…eating!
Chopstick trousses were created back in the 1700s in northern China. Their use was encouraged after a law was passed by the Qianlong Emperor, which decreed that all Manchu-Chinese had to carry around a pair of chopsticks, and a knife, with which to eat their food. Manchurian and Mongolian dining habits and styles meant that a knife was an essential part of one’s eating utensils, since the knife would be used to slice or cut up one’s meat. The passing of this law was to ensure the preservation of Manchurian culture, since Manchus were a minority elite, ruling over the much larger Han Chinese population at the time.
A lot of people call these things Chinese or Japanese eating trousses. I’m not sure why, because they don’t come from Japan, and while they existed in China, they were never used by the Chinese. Japanese and Chinese dining customs don’t use knives – they didn’t then, they don’t now. Trousses like these were largely used by minorities.
The standard chopstick trousse comes with a single, thin, long-bladed knife, and a pair of chopsticks, which may, or may not be chained at the top (to prevent loss if they fall out). I have seen sets with two knives, and two sets of chopsticks, but the vast majority will have just the one knife, and one set of chopsticks.
How is it Made?
Almost all trousses were made of wood – wood is easy to find, easy to carve and shape, and easy to stick together. This trousse is also made of wood. How trousses differed from each other, however, was in how they were decorated. Trousses could be embellished in any number of ways, from inlaying bone or silver, brass or nickel, leather, sharkskin, stingray, or in the case of my trousse – tortoiseshell.
The tortoiseshell – thin and flexible, would have been steamed – much like how you steam wood – to soften it – and when it was especially soft and flexible, the tortoiseshell was wrapped around the wooden body of the trousse, with a layer of glue in between, to adhere one to the other. A similar process would’ve been carried out to sheath the knife-handle in the same tortoiseshell.
What is it Made Of?
This trousse is made of wood (which makes up the body of the trousse and the handle on the knife), brass (the collar at the top of the trousse), tortoiseshell (the decorative overlay), silver (the chopsticks) and finally – the white collar and pommel on the knife are both made of bone. Bone was a very common material to make trousse accessories from – chopsticks, knife scales, hilts, collars and pommels were all made from bone. It was abundant, cheap, or free, easy to carve, and could be polished to a beautiful whiteness – and much easier to find than ivory!
Are Trousses Common?
Fairly common, yes. I suspect that millions of these things were made over the centuries, and that many were probably brought to the West by expats, explorers, missionaries or tourists traveling in Asia in the 1800s and 1900s. They range in price on eBay from $150.00 to over $300-$500, depending on age, condition, and level of decoration and detail. I don’t know exactly who collects these things, but there does seem to be an interest in them.
Repairing the Trousse
The trousse was pretty cheap when I bought it – this was largely due to the fact that it wasn’t complete at the time. The trousse didn’t come with its original chopsticks, which were probably bone, so I replaced them with my silver chopsticks which I bought about two years ago. On top of that, some of the tortoiseshell was also coming loose. I removed the tortoiseshell and glued it back on. Once it was secured, then I started working on another part of the trousse that needed my attention: the pommel at the top of the knife.
The point of the pommel is to protect the top of the knife handle. In this case, the pommel was missing, but I could tell from the hilt or the collar at the end of the blade next to the handle, that it would originally have been made of bone. I was able to secure some small pieces of bone, and, using a file, some sandpaper, glue and oil, I was able to shape the bone, glue it onto the top of the knife, file and sand it flat, polish it smooth, and shape it to the shape of the top of the handle.
Although it’s a tiny detail, just fixing this one element took several hours of filing, shaping, measuring, sawing, gluing, filing, and more filing, and finally, polishing, to get the new pommel not only to stay on top of the knife, but also fit in with the thickness and shape of the rest of the knife and its bone hilt, as well. It’s not 100% perfect, but at least the knife now looks much more complete than it previously had done.