Gilded Age Gent’s Table Etiquette

     

Above is a carved, sheep’s bone, apple corer from the 1600’s along with a Georgian era silver apple corer from 1808, next to a gilded age fruit knife and a rare, gilded age “melon” knife. Fruit served at the table needed to be eaten with utensils and a gentleman at the table was indispensable for coring fruit like apples or plums for the young lady seated next to him. Women were not allowed to perform such a masculine etiquette task as coring their own fruit. A true gentleman carried his corer with him in his pocket, to pull out when called upon. 

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It is a piece of refined coarseness to employ the fingers instead of the fork to effect certain operations at the dinner table, and on some other similar occasions. To know how and when to follow the fashion of Eden, and when that of more civilized life, is one of the many points which distinguish a gentleman from one not a gentleman; or rather, in this case, which shows the difference between a man of the world, and one who has not “the tune of the time.” (Shakespeare) ~ Cardinal Richelieu detected an adventurer who passed himself off for a nobleman, by his helping himself to olives with a fork. He might have applied the test to a vast many other things. Yet, on the other hand, a gentleman would lose his reputation, if he were to take up a piece of sugar with his fingers and not with the sugar-tongs. – From The Laws of Etiquette, 1836

Found Under 

“Etiquette of a Gentleman”

A silver knife and fork should be placed to each guest at dessert. If you are asked to prepare fruit for a lady, be careful to do so by means of the silver knife and fork only, and never to touch it with your fingers. — By P. F. Collier, Collier’s Cyclopedia of Social & Commercial Usage, 1882

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

17th C. Flatware and Persons of Quality

Early table forks had only two tines. Above are 2, two-tined forks. One is a travel fork which fits into a bowl end, creating a spoon.

LIVERPOOL, Feb. 19– Letters and other documents dealing with manners and customs of daily life in the 17th century which came to light recently tend to show that it was customary in those days for “persons of quality” to have sets of their own spoons, knives and forks which they took with them when invited out. These papers were of particular interest just at this time to collectors of antiques in connection with an addition made recently to the British Museum. This was the earliest hallmarked table fork known, engraved with the crest of Manners and Montagu, 1632. 

About the same time a silver spoon of identical hallmark and crest was taken to Haddon Hall. Mention of such a set is made in the will of Mrs. Katherine Ridgeway, dated May 9, 1627, which was among the documents destroyed in a fire some time ago at the Four Courts, Dublin. 

The will says: “I bequeath to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor my little seller of crystal bottles item. I give and bequeath to my Ladye of Elye my gilt spoone with the forks and penknife suitable to it.” Mrs. Ridgeway was widow of George Ridgway, secretary of the Irish Council, and the Lord Chancellor was Adam Loftus, Lord Loftus of Ely.

Books on etiquette and table manners were far from being the prerogative of the Victorian age, it is revealed, as in 1663 there was published in London a book entitled “The Accomplished Lady’s Rich Closet of Rarities,” in which the following rules. are laid down: 

“A gentlewoman being at table abroad or at home must observe to keep her body straighte, and lean not by any means upon her elbowes –nor by ravenous gesture discover a voracious appetite. 

“Talke not when you have meate in your mouth, and do not smacke like a pig – nor eat speene-meat so hot that tears stand in your eyes.

“It is very uncourtly to drink so large a draught that your breath is almost gone, and you are forced to blow strongly to recover yourself. Throwing down your liquors as into a funnel is an action fitter for a juggler than a gentlewoman. 

“In carving at your own table distribute the best pieces first, and it will appear very decant and comely to use a fork; so touch no meat without it.”

Reference to the fork was of particular interest to the museum authorities, for those present-day indispensable instruments had not then been long introduced, it appears. 

Forks were first imported from Italy, and their use in England at the time was considered pedantic and laughable. One writer of the time speaks of a silver fork as “being used of late by some of our spruce gallants,” which did not tend to make the fork popular at all among certain sets.– By Associated Press, 1925

 

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

Dining Etiquette from the 15th C. On

Jacopo del Sellaio, an Italian painter of the fifteenth century, depicts King Ahasuerus at a table set up on a dais with a heavy sideboard in the background. The diners, wearing elaborate hats, sit in the courtyard and are approached by groups who wish to speak with the King.

In Europe, in the late fifteenth century, there was a definite rule that it was wrong to grab food with two hands and that meat should be taken with three fingers and not too much put in the mouth at the same time. There was, however, a common joke in the early sixteenth century that three fingers in the salt could be taken as the sign of a villain- for salt, owing to its preciousness, was to be taken from the cellar with a knife. It was also not considered good manners to lick greasy fingers or rub them on a jacket instead of using a piece of bread or a napkin.

Americans born in the elite circle in the seventeenth century had the charming custom of wearing elaborate and highly fashionable hats to dinner, a custom dating from fourteenth-century Europe and shown in the photo above. Hats were removed only when a toast was given; to be uncovered at meals was, until the eighteenth century, not etiquette.

In the mid-eighteenth century, however, the eating habits of the lower classes in many countries, including America, were still on a rather primitive level. Farmers and their families stood around the table while they served themselves with a wooden spoon from a large wooden bowl. They took their meat in their fingers and put it on a piece of bread that was used as a trencher, then ate it sitting or standing anywhere in the room. Fingers and knives were the tools, and forks were by no means commonplace. According to Helen Sprackling's book Customs on the Table Top, an Englishwoman traveling in America in 1827 wrote to her sister that “Americans, male and female, were invariable and indefatigable eaters with their knives.”

Still, some distinctions were made by those who cared to do things properly, as noted in The School of Good Manners, by Eleazar Moody: “Bite not thy bread, but break it; but not with slovenly fingers nor the same wherewith thou takest up thy meat. Dip not thy knife upright in thy hand, but sloping and lay it down at thy right hand, with the blade upon the plate.”— Patricia Easterbrook Roberts

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

Etiquette of a Puritan Place Setting

Puritan place-setting, c.1670 — Photograph: Jeremy Phillips for Fairfax House, York

With England recovering from a long period of austere Puritanism, and the Crown reclaimed by a Monarch used to extravagance and ornament, it still took time for luxury to manifest itself again on the dining-room table.

The one exotic item in this particular assembly is the napkin, woven in Flanders with patterns of flowers, but folded in the shape of a fish, after instructions in Giles Rose's manual.

The knife and two-tine fork by Abraham Brock and spoon by Jacob Isaac could not be simpler, although there is some decoration on the Façon de Venise goblet. 

It is the monumental silver candlesticks by Jacob Bodendick, 1677, which stand out, however, resting on their spreading square base and cushion-shaped knop. Notice also how the baluster stem terminates in a square candle socket.— From “British Cutlery, An Illustrated History of Design, Evolution and Use”, York Civic Trust, 2001

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