Simplicity in Table Setting is Key

Elaborate and ornate settings go with ceremonious living; if you do not live ceremoniously, do not adopt them. Simple living calls for the beauty of simplicity. If you live one way, you can not imitate the other smartly.

The Keynote Is Simplicity

Two or three implements on each side of a plate take up considerable space, so for reasons of neatness and order the table is not loaded with more silver than is needed for the main courses. The dessert spoon and fork are therefore placed on the dessert plate, which stands on the sideboard ready – set for convenience. They are brought to the table on that plate after the more substantial part of the meal is over and placed in front of the diner, who himself not the maid-lifts them off at once and places them on the table.

As we noted in a previous post, service is always from the left because it is easier for the person served to help himself from that side. Used plates are always removed from the left lest the person removing them precipitate a great crash of china and glass by knocking against a diner's hand, which might be stretched out suddenly to take a glass of water. Therefore, we repeat: serve from the left; take all dishes away from the left, but remove glasses and unused right-hand implements from the right.

The sort of china, glass, and silver used, the way a table may be decorated and lighted, the kind of covering most appropriate -all these depend on the taste of the hostess and her understanding of what fits her surroundings. There is no rigid rule of etiquette about them. Elaborate and ornate settings go with ceremonious living; if you do not live ceremoniously, do not adopt them. Simple living calls for the beauty of simplicity. If you live one way, you can not imitate the other smartly.

Good taste is not a matter of the pocketbook; it is shown in the table arrangements of cottage and mansion alike. For instance, costly lace cloths, silver candelabra, priceless porcelain compote dishes, and great silver tankards filled with hothouse blossoms are suitable for fine houses, while a table made of polished silvery driftwood, set with gay pottery and colored glasses and decorated by large shells filled with wild flowers, is charming in a beach cottage.– From “Table Setting and Service” by Elizabeth Barnard, 1935

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

The “Why” of Our Table Setting

Reduced to its simplest terms, arranging the flat silver is only a matter of placing it in the order of use, so that as he picks up the implement for each course, the diner will be working from the outside in.

Table setting is a simple enough procedure if you understand that the silver is placed as conveniently as possible for the user. Once you have decided on the menu and the silver to be used for each course, begin setting the table by spacing the place plates. Allow about thirty inches to each cover. And naturally if the table is larger, the places will be a little farther apart.

Reduced to its simplest terms, arranging the flat silver is only a matter of placing it in the order of use, so that as he picks up the implement for each course, the diner will be working from the outside in. Following this rule, you will have at the left the fish fork, the meat fork, and, nearest the plate, the salad fork. At the right: the soup spoon, fish knife, and, nearest the plate, the meat knife. The cutting edges of the knives should be turned in to face the plate. For the placing of flat silver see the sketch above.

Convention has decided, broadly, that soup spoons and knives go on the right of a plate because they are used primarily by the right hand, and forks on the left because as long as their fellow utensils, the knives, are in action, they are left-hand implements. If you eat according to the English method, as many Americans do, you do not change your fork to your right hand while there is anything on your plate to cut. You use the two implements continuously during the meat course. 

If, however, you prefer to eat according to the American method laying down the knife every few minutes and transferring the fork to the right hand-there is no rule against doing so; it is a manner of eating upheld by many. Of course, when a fork is the only implement necessary, it is always held in the right hand.– From “Table Setting and Service” by Elizabeth Barnard, 1935

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