IV
TABLE
APPOINTMENTS
CHAPTER IV
TABLE APPOINTMENTS
Cutlery: Knives, forks, and spoons—Salt cellars—Cruet stands—Punch and toddy—Porringers and cups—Trays and waiters—The tea table—Cream jugs—Sugar tongs and nippers—Caddies—Cupids—Nutcrackers—Turned woodware.
It is very difficult to realize in these days of refinement and of comparative luxury, even in the homes of the working classes, what the table appointments must have been in early English homes. Sometimes glowing accounts are given of the feasting of olden time; but no doubt many of the great occasions contrasted in their luxurious magnificence with the usual mode of living. They were, however, the days of feeding rather than of refinement in partaking of the sumptuous feast. The table appointments on such occasions were crude and simple, and they were altogether absent from the tables of the lower classes. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that the conditions under which people lived in mediæval England, in the days when the baron and his followers assembled in the great hall, and with his chosen companions sat above the salt, satisfied men of wealth; it was, however, in accord with the spirit of the age.
The primitive methods of serving up food and eating it observed by the majority of people then would be looked upon with disgust nowadays by every one. The table appointments were not only very few, but those which were used, like the knife and spoon, were often brought into the feasting hall by those who were to use them. The polished oaken board was often laden with rough and readily prepared dishes, the result of some fortunate expedition or of a prosperous hunt. The knife was the chief implement used until comparatively recent days, for forks are quite a modern innovation. The spoon, it is true, goes back to hoary antiquity, but in England, even in the Middle Ages, spoons were used chiefly for ecclesiastical purposes. In Harrison's Elizabethan England we read that the times had changed, for instead of "treen platters" there were pewter plates, and tin or silver spoons instead of wood.
