For those who love love love etiquette
Now that we discussed the napkin to a torturous degree. Let’s look at the current American rules for using your napkin at dinner: Firstly, the general rule is to place your napkin in your lap as soon as you sit down. There are two exceptions to this rule. When attending a formal dinner, you will wait for…
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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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Here we have one of those weird evolutions of terms where one phrase begins to mean nearly the opposite thing. High Tea is one of the great examples of this. Company dinner is another. For an American in the early and mid 19th century, a company dinner would have been one of the most extravagant…
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“The dining-room must be quietly but well lighted. There should be no glaring lights, but a soft radiance which is so general as to make everything clear. An electric light hanging eighteen inches above the table, or a tall lamp whose light is at about the same height, either of them well shaded, are satisfactory additions to…
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Generally speaking, you rarely see place cards today unless you’re at a wedding. Personally, I wish they would make a comeback. I’ve been to a lot of dinners where people approach the table and then hover, looking nervous and wondering where they should park their butts. When you don’t tell people where to sit, couples sit with…
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In the “All the Stuff” posts, I’m going to talk about obscure etiquette/dining/home items that you might not know the purpose of. This is all the stuff that might have filled a Regency, Victorian or Edwardian home. Many of these items had specialized functions in previous times that have since been lost to history. Our first items…
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