For those who love love love etiquette
Talk about something you rarely see today. I came across this oddly shaped spoon when I was looking for additional pieces to my silverware set and found a listing for a chow chow spoon. If you’ve never heard of chow chow, you aren’t alone. Chow chow is an American cabbage relish. Used as a condiment…
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Oh, the lonely sad punchbowl. You see them on the bottom shelf at the goodwill. So forlorn, so forsaken. Why has this happened? I love punch. OK, in a Covid world, no one is drinking from the same bowl at the moment, but way before 2020, punch seemed to go the way of the dodo.…
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Nut dishes are another item we rarely see on tables today, despite the fact they were used well into the 1980’s. Really coming into use during the high Victorian period, Nut dishes or nut cups were placed on the table in front of the place setting or in between place settings. Filled with nuts or…
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As I mentioned earlier, the Victorians loved a system of classification for everything, even if it wasn’t particularly rooted in science. So, when the Victorians developed an obsession with fortune telling and alternate spiritual realms, (I’ll cover this more in a future post) the highly detailed and classification oriented practice of Astrology became a natural…
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When canned goods became popular prior to the turn of the century, they were a luxury good. As they were mass produced and became available to all, a quandary arose. What should one do with cans that would be consumed in one, (or nearly one) sitting? Placing the milk in a pitcher for one family…
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File under things we never see any more; tiny little plates, usually about 3 inches in Diameter set in the upper left corner of the place setting. Prior to the 1800’s with the exception of Royal tables, butter was likely served from a communal dish, either in small scoops or in a great mound. This…
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For years my mother wore a large brimmed sun hat out in the garden affixed with a hat pin. She had dozens of hats made of every conceivable type of material and she had many hatpins to match. In my twenties I began wearing hats often, so my mother gave me a couple hatpins. That began a very…
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By 1922, Lilian Eichler writes that, “Menu-cards are no longer used at the formal dinner, unless it is in celebration of some auspicious occasion and honored guests are present. In this case, the hostess has the menus printed or engraved in a delicate script and has one placed beside the plate of each guest. A favorite fashion…
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“The finger-bowls are usually brought in on the dessert plates which also hold the dessert spoons and forks. Each person sets his finger-bowl and the doily underneath it on the table in front of or at the side of his dessert plate, to be used later. The dessert spoon and fork are generally placed on the table…
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The chopstick has been used since 1200 B.C. starting in China and moving steadily throughout Asia over the next seven hundred years, though they were used mainly for cooking not for eating for hundreds of years. Bronze versions of chopsticks were even found at Yinxu archeological digs that date back to near 400 B.C. Over time,…
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