Thanks so much for joining the “room by room” series! People living today would likely find the dining rooms of yesteryear to be about as roomy and airy as a rabbit warren. He laid his hand on a bunch of grapes; they were so heavy that he dropped them with a clatter of gold upon the golden dish.” –Charles Dannelly Shaw, Stories of the Ancient Greeks (1903). The dinner is “the symbol of people’s civilization,” wrote Robert Laird Collier in his 1886 domestic manual English Home Life. Only the wealthy had them. Such vivid appointments obscured a dark reality. Not 30 years later this practice was deemed barbaric. A well-to-do Roman household could include as many as 400 slaves, who did everything from choosing menus to arranging and presenting parting gifts to guests. His clothes had already become of gold, so stiff that he could hardly move in them. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. With guidance from Collier’s domestic manual and others like it, British housewives filled their homes with the necessary domestic equipment for the purpose of turning them into veritable incubators of a moral and productive citizenry. I have been collecting plates to hang in my living room. A large, inexpertly drawn square represents the solid-oak dining table whose purchase claimed most of Post’s borrowed sum; two or three smaller squares, a retinue of sideboards and china cabinets. I was super excited about redoing them myself, but as I mentioned earlier I decided to have the table professionally painted in the end and painted the chairs myself. In all activities grace was the watchword. Our logo, banner, and trademark are registered and fully copyright protected (not subject to Creative Commons). Thus in Languedoc between 1350 and 1450, the peasant and his patriarchal family were masters of an abandoned countryside.” –Fernand Braudel. The dining table consisted of several boards, removable as soon as the meal was over … There were spoons and some knives, but forks were unknown. “When the lamp of antiquity flickered out in the Dark Ages, it was the middle class that led mankind forward to the new day. “When the lamp of antiquity flickered out in the Dark Ages, it was the middle class that led mankind forward to the new day. We are not, perhaps, descended from cannibals or from animals, but there is no doubt about our being from cavemen, who knew nothing about such refinements as table manners.” –from The P.T.A. We are not, perhaps, descended from cannibals or from animals, but there is no doubt about our being from cavemen, who knew nothing about such refinements as table manners.” –from, “Q. What time are they allowed every day to quit the factory to get their dinner? Plants everywhere have learned by actual experience that warm meals overcome the depressing effect of winter’s chill — their workers have been more efficient since cold dinner pails and unhealthy neighborhood lunch counters were supplanted by Van Range Factory Lunch Rooms.” –From an advertisement in, “What would you have done with this mother’s problem? In earlier decades, wives and mothers had welcomed their families to dinner between noon and one. This second, more elegant room displayed the family’s fashionable decor: gas chandeliers, heavy tapestries, and tables and chairs of black walnut or some other expensive wood. Your email address will not be published. I’d say having a dining room makes me a fully fledged grown-up, were it not for the fact that I still rent. “Para was invited to a Roman banquet, which had been prepared with all the pomp and sensuality of the east: the hall resounded with cheerful music, and the company was already heated with wine; when the count retired for an instant, drew his sword, and gave the signal of the murder.” –Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89), “As for the tarts, I didn’t eat a mouthful of them, but I just smeared myself up with the honey, I can tell you! That seat also became gold in a moment. His chair was too heavy to move, so he had another placed at the table and sat down. The proper meal hour, the etiquette for serving and eating various courses, the appropriate attire, the dining room’s furnishings, the seating arrangement, the fit subjects of conversation, even the food itself — these innumerable punctilios came to form a sort of rubric governing mealtime conduct.