Napkin Etiquette and Usage

Its relevance is so significant, that in Buckingham Palace, when setting the table for a state dinner, an expert is dedicated to the art of the napkin, from the importance of the fabric, its washing, ironing and of course folding and placement of the napkins for the laying of the table. — Image from the book “For the Royal Table: Dining at the Palace” and was created by “The Royal Collection” in Great Britain. 

What makes a napkin? A piece of cloth (or occasionally paper), almost always square, that’s main purpose is to dab or wipe food away from our mouths while eating or drinking. 

If we have children, it seems that we continually pick up and wipe them with napkins… accidents at the table when a drink spills, or food that falls onto the table or children themselves. In other words, napkins at a dinner table are indispensable.

I believe that napkins also “speak”. I believe napkins have their own identity, as I say. It is “their language”. Their physical appearance: fabric, color, design, how we place them, where we put them… they say so much.

The napkin can be square or rectangular, depending on the time of the meal, the size of the napkin varies. If it is for cocktails, it is small and square. If it is for dinner, we use the largest sized napkin, usually in a rectangle. 

On the internet we can find a lot of different ways of how to fold them to “present” them at the table. Various shapes have come in and out of fashion over the centuries. The most important thing is our creativity and intention to achieve something nice in such an important moment as sharing a meal with our loved ones.

The napkin is the first thing we see when we sit down in a restaurant for a business lunch, a romantic dinner, or simply a nice meal with our friends. Its presentation influences in such a way that just with a napkin we can instinctively know what to expect from that meeting and meal.

Its relevance is so significant, that in Buckingham Palace, when setting the table for a state dinner, an expert is dedicated to the art of the napkin, from the importance of the fabric, its washing, ironing and of course folding and placement of the napkins for the laying of the table.

The napkin is presented on the table, almost always on top of the plate or to our left at the beginning of the fork sequence.

When we sit at the table before starting a meal we place the napkin across our laps. If during the meal we have to get up, it is best to leave it on the seat of the chair, although depending on the casualness of where we are dining, we can occasionally leave a napkin slightly crumpled on the left side of the setting until we return. When we finish eating, we will leave it on the left side of the setting, but only when the meal is finished and everyone is getting up to leave the table.

All these rules are important, so that the rest of the participants, especially the waiters and waitresses, know how to proceed.

Details as simple as those if made by our children decorating the table at home to the sophisticated tables in elegant restaurants, all leave a mark to remember.

Meet our newest contributor, Isabel. E. Martinez, who was educated in Business Management at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, in Caracas, Venezuela. After relocating for a few years to Miami, Florida, Isabel developed a company teaching computer skills. Among her clients were Baccardi in Bermuda, and Mavesa, Telcel (Movistar), and Heinz in Venezuela. That is when she discovered her passion for teaching. As her children became adults, she shifted her focus and dedicated her time to teach on subjects she is very passionate about; Hospitality and Table Etiquette. Throughout workshops in English and in Spanish, Isabel works with employees in the hospitality industry, and those business professionals who when interacting with customers, would like to make sure that they are the most professional representations of their companies. Especially when attending business lunches and events. She also offers youth and teen courses in etiquette, helping them to excel with integrity and pride in whatever field they desire to pursue. To learn more about Isabel, visit her website: www.learningschool2.com or @learningschool_

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Server Theatrics? Or Better Service?

Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners) is one of my favorite writers of etiquette. Witty and knowledgeable, her answers are pure gold and sometimes hilariously funny. But Etiquipedia wonders if she was ever employed in the restaurant industry. If she had been, perhaps this answer wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting, nor as funny. Having been a manager many years ago, in a very popular Newport Beach restaurant, Etiquipedia knows that kneeling down to a table was not a common servers’ trick to get a higher tip back in the day. It was, oftentimes, to hear the patrons’ orders more clearly. When a server is standing in a very noisy establishment, possibly with their ears a few feet from customers’ voices, it’s very difficult to hear the food orders being placed. Even when it was quiet in the restaurant, many diners have a bad habit of looking down at their menus while reading from them and placing their orders. Kneeling down was one way to put the servers’ ears closer to the customers’ voices. This is something I have taught in my youth advanced classes for 36 years: Look up and directly at servers’ faces when ordering from them. Timid voices of young people often don’t carry in loud restaurant settings. Those voices don’t reach the servers’ ears.”

Kneeling shouldn't earn waiter extra tip according to Miss Manners… 

Etiquipedia however wonders, should it?

Dear Miss Manners: I have noticed some very strange behavior in several nice restaurants. “Servers” (no longer called waiters) getting down on their knees or squatting to take my order. These servers are young, but still! My friend asked one why, and he replied that he was tired. I asked another, and he replied that he didn't like to exhibit physical dominance over customers. It is all rather startling. Is this a new custom in the making?

Gentle Reader: New? Miss Manners assures you that this is an Elizabethan custom. Those who served the Lord of the castle and his most honored guests, did so from a kneeling position. They were called “servers” or “sewers.”

You have probably wandered into an Elizabethan restaurant, or posibly a time warp. Do the servers kiss your napkin, as well as taste your food, to make sure that it is not poisoned? You might test Miss Manners’ theory by calling “Sewer!” to see if one responds, or by throwing the bones on the floor to see if this is the approved way of busing one’s plate.

No, wait. If this posture has to do with the new claim that people tip more to servers who hover below them, rather than above them, Miss Manners’ tests would probably not be a good idea. Neither, in that case, would be increased tipping, which would only encourage this silliness. —By Miss Manners, Press Democrat, 1996

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

The “Red Book of Good Social Form”

Before Emily Post’s blue book of “Etiquette,” there was W.C. Green’s “red book of etiquette.” His “Dictionary of Etiquette,” was easy to read, well-reviewed and extremely popular. It was first published in 1904 and is still being sold today. Below is what W.C. Green had to say about bachelors’ dinners of the day.

BACHELORS' DINNERS. They follow the usual custom of formal dinners, and may be as elaborate as desired. Women may be invited. Such dinners are often given for men only.

CALLS. Women do not call upon a bachelor after attending a dinner given by him.

CHAPERONE. If women are present, a married woman as chaperone is indispensable, and her husband must also be invited. The host should call upon the chaperone and personally request the favor. The chaperone is taken into dinner by the host, unless the latter takes in the woman in whose honor the dinner may be given. In the latter case, the chaperone is seated at the host's left. She gives the signal for the women to leave the dining-room. All guests should be introduced to the chaperone, and she should be called upon after a short time by the host.

DRESS. All guests wear evening dress.

HOST. The host should call upon the chaperone within a few days after the dinner. If men only are present, he either precedes or follows the guests into the dining-room, and if he has given the dinner in honor of some man, he has the latter seated at his right. His duties are the same as the host at dinners.

INVITATIONS. These are usually given in brief notes, but may be engraved, and are similar to the regular invitations to dinners, and are treated accordingly.

MEN. The men wear evening dress, and follow the same etiquette as at other dinners.

WOMEN. The women wear evening dress, and follow the same etiquette as at all dinners, except that no calls are made by them afterward upon the host. –“A Dictionary of Etiquette,” W. C. Green's red book on social good form, 1904

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Gilded Age Travel Correspondence

“It is a convenience that first class hotels should abolish and a sort of cheap advertisement that does no credit to the proprietor or the hotel patrons.” Nevertheless, it is a convenience of which not a few people, usually regarded as well bred, avail themselves.

Items About Letters

“The practice of writing letters or notes at hotels on paper with a view of the house is beneath comment,” according to a feminine authority on etiquette. "No man or woman of culture would commit such an error. It is a convenience that first class hotels should abolish and a sort of cheap advertisement that does no credit to the proprietor or the hotel patrons." Nevertheless, it is a convenience of which not a few people, usually regarded as well bred, avail themselves. 

More generally practiced is the following from the same source, "When writing letters at a country house, stamp them before they are collected for the post; your host is not supposed to pay your postage. Out of town people usually have a heavy mail and can spare no time to attend to the minor details of their guests' correspondence." — The San Jose Herald, 1893

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Gilded Age Elevated Simple Celery

Anytime I find an old patented item in patent archives, which has something to do with food, dining, or serving foods, I get excited. Especially if it’s something I’ve never seen brought to life via old Antiques listed online or in shops. This is one. I don’t believe I’ve seen before. I don’t think it was made or put into production of any kind.

This one is from the Gilded Age and the Gilded Age was a period in which some of today’s simplest sounding foods, could be considered exotic or very important to one’s dining peers. Celery was one such food. That is because celery was perishable, meaning only the truly wealthy could have it at a variety of times in the year they could afford to preserve it in ice and any other manner that was modern in the late 1800s. The poor and lower classes could not afford such a luxury item.

As I’ve shown before in posts here, Celery was rather special. It was elevated at the table in special receptacles, called celery vases. We think of vases as being for holding flowers or purely decorative. Hostesses in the late 19 century displayed celery in them. The simple green stalks with leaves had their own fabulous vessels at the table? Of course! How else was a host supposed to show them off? 

Celery vases came in silver, plate, and sterling, crystal and even delicate china. What was paired with celery stalks? Salt. Another food which most modern dinner guests consider a very humble addition to the table, with no knowledge of how important salt has been throughout history, and to life itself. Below is a portion of an article A Glimpse of Victorian, Middle-Class Dining from 2021. Below that is an explanation of the patented vase and salt holder.

“The impact of new technologies-such as in food processing, meatpacking, refrigeration and rapid transportation-and their relation to food, menu planning and serving implements was also explored. As more foods became available, their status was often reflected by the utensils designed for their service and display. If you look at the implements, you can make some assumptions about the value people placed on certain types of foods.

A blown and engraved footed glass vase for serving celery for example, and a glass and silverplate sardine box and sterling silver sardine server decorated with fish motifs, gives an indication of the regard held for foods now common place, that were once considered rare and unique. “When celery was a high status food, it was displayed high on the table; as it became widely available, it was relegated to low, flat dishes.” Ms. Williams said.

Similarly, a silver-plate cup on a pivotal base was designed with a spiral hook inside, on which an orange could be twisted and firmly held in place as it was rotated, and then eaten with a special knife and spoon. The objects in the show were selected to illustrate a range of styles from simple to ornate. One interesting thing about the exhibition was that it took an object and then showed how elaborate its presentation might have been. Sterling silver and cut glass were used by the upper class while items in pressed glass and silver-plate were used by the middle-class. — Portions of this are from an article published in the New York Times, April 3, 1988

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE

FRANK C. WINSHIP, OF BRIDGEPORT, OHIO, ASSIGNOR TO LA BELLE GLASS COMPANY, OF SAME PLACE

DESIGN FOR COMBINED GLASS VESSELS

Specific invention forming part of Design No. 10,954, dated December 10, 1878; application filed November 22, 1878.  [Term of patent 37 years.] 

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, FRANK C. WINSHIP, of Bridgeport, in the county of Belmont and State of Ohio, have invented a new Design for Combined Glass Vessel; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the same, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, forming part of this specification, in which—

Figure 1 is a perspective view, and Fig. 2 a bottom plan. Similar letters of reference in the several figures denote the same parts.
The vessel for which my design is specially adapted is a combination of a small “individual" salt-holder with a larger holder adapted to contain celery, or to hold a napkin, or, by reducing its size, to be used as an egg-glass, or for other similar table use; and my design consists in the arrangement of an elongated flat bar, e, with an upwardly-projecting annular flange, constituting the salt-holder, and by an upwardly-projecting stem supporting a bowl or goblet shaped vessel, constituting the celery holder, or its equivalent, said salt-holder and celery-holder being independent of each other, except as connected by the base-plate. This necessarily gives the whole combination a peculiar configuration, which is the subject of this invention, independently of any particular ornamentation of the combined vessel.

In the drawings, B is the base; S, the salt-holder, and C the celery-holder, arranged as above described. The edges of the base may be fluted, as shown at a, and the sides of the salt-holder may be fluted as shown at e. mm are crossed marks or indentations on the under side of the base, that show through it and add to the beauty of the device.

I claim as my invention- The design for a combined vessel for table use, herein described, consisting, essentially, in the elongated flat glass base-plate B, supporting the annular salt-vesselS, and the stem and bowl C, arranged with relation to each other in the form substantially as described.

FRANK C. WINSHIP.

Witnesses:
J. A. HARRIS, 

T. C. ROWLES

Contributor Maura Graber has been teaching etiquette to children, teens and adults, and training new etiquette instructors, since 1990, as founder and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette.  She is also a writer, has been featured in countless newspapers, magazines and television shows and was an on-air contributor to PBS in Southern California for 15 years. Along with teaching etiquette to all ages and giving talks on old flatware, she was an etiquette consultant for 2 seasons of the HBO – Julian Fellowes’ series, “The Gilded Age” and continues to consult on historical dining and social etiquette.

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Craziness of Kings and Queens

 The intellectual degeneracy of etiquette monarchs may have a good deal to do with the Sybaritism of their palace life.

Why Monarchs Were Insane

Pathologists have often pointed out the fact that physical and mental enervation are apt to go hand in hand, and the intellectual degeneracy of etiquette monarchs may have a good deal to do with the Sybaritism of their palace life.

The plebeian functions which mediaval sovereigns were obliged to perform by proxy included the adjustment of their gala gloves. They had flunkies to remove their cravats and warm their nightshirts, unplait their pigtails and tuck up their bedclothes around their shoulders. In the morning courtiers competed for the honor of holding their washbasin. Peers of the realm waited on bended knees to buckle their shoes. 

If the inheritor of a legitimate throne lifted a spoon to break an egg. Lynx-eyed lackeys anticipated his needs with the agility of trained conjurers. Like his food, his information on current topics was served ready dressed and cooked, till he turned into a masticating machine and repeater of conventional twaddle.-Lippincott's, 1901

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Europe’s Noble Ragamuffins

After several days of reading about the merchandising of the House of Windsor, where only those claiming the moniker “Sussex” were hanging around with their wallets open, it was refreshing to read how many Americans have always viewed such Noble Ragamuffins. It’s also a good reminder that forks have only been common at America’s tables since the 1830’s to 1840’s. ~According to a quick Google search, I was able to glean this information on Fishbladder’s book: Based on an 1893 edition of the Eldora Enterprise, the “Handbook of Indoor Etiquette” was a fictional or satirical, yet influential, manual credited to the “immortal professor Fishbladder.” It served as a guide for high society in Chicago, emphasizing refined manners such as eating peas with a fork, promoting dull-finished jewelry, and encouraging quiet elegance in style to combat uncouth elements.- From newspaper archives .com

We are not giving ourselves any uneasiness about the visit of the Infanta Eulalie to Chicago. All this talk about our inability to keep up our end of the rules of etiquette is simply so much fiction calculated to belittle our cultured society. Chicago has not been idle the last four years. 

Ever since the immortal Professor A. J. Fishbladder came into the midst of us and taught us how to eat peas with a fork we have been able to hold our own against the rest of creation. There was a time when some uncouth elements in our society denounced Fishbladder as a charlatan. All these persecutions did Fishbladder suffer with the patient, unprotesting meekness of a medieval Christian martyr, and now, lo and behold, the harvest has come, and we glory in the fruition of his teachings.

It is to Fishbladder that we are largely indebted for our ability to toady, miscellaneously and abjectly, to the vast and unassorted lot of foreign titled nincompoops and knaves that is being spawned upon this country at this time. So long as the Fishbladder "Handbook of Indoor Etiquette" holds out its saving grace we need have no fear for Chicago's culture, and we can confidently view the swelling influx of Europe's noble ragamuffins. -Chicago Record. 1895

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Medieval Times Dining Madness

Even the noble families in England in the Middle Ages shared common plates and cups, used fingers instead of forks, licked their plates, wiped their teeth on the tablecloth… 

OLD CUSTOMS SEEM CURIOUS

Common Plates and Cups Were Once Shared 

and 

Diners Fought for the Biggest Share of Portions

Noble families in England in the Middle Ages shared common plates and cups, used fingers instead of forks, licked their plates, wiped their teeth on the tablecloth, and scrambled for the largest portion, says the Detroit News. Books on etiquette issued in the Fifteenth century pointed out that these things were not good manners. The art of cooking in the Middle Ages flourished, however, cooks excelling at artistic and rich confectionery.

Dancing in medieval times was true to its name. Dancers really moved with nimbleness and agility instead of slowly posturing round the room in the manner of modern dancers. The noble and his family and servants lived and slept in the great hall of the castle, with next to no privacy. A better state of things evolved gradually, more rooms being added and more windows put in, insuring greater seclusion for the lord and his family. — The Banner, 1923

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia