The Setting of the Places: Tables and Chairs

This is part of a series I've been wanting to do for a long time so I am excited I am able to have Eugene do this for my blog.  It is about etiquette as was appropriate in the Victorian Era (1837–1901).  During that time, culturally there was a transition away from the rationalism of the Georgian period and toward romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and the arts. The era is popularly associated with the values of social restraint. What?  Social restraint? What's that?!?  So we move on....thank you for reading. 

Love, George

The Setting of the Places:  Tables and Chairs

The distance between places at the table must be geometrically spaced. There should not be a table that is so short that guest have no elbow room and the servants cannot pass the dishes properly. If a dining-room has very high-backed chairs and are places so close as to be almost touching, it's impossible for even the most skillful server not to risk spilling something over someone. Also, to place people a yard or more apart so that conversation has to be shouted into the din made by the shouting of all the others is equally trying. If you want to be ideal when setting the places at a dinner table make sure that from plate center to plate center is about two feet apart. If your chairs have a narrow and low backs then people can sit much closer together. This is especially true of a small round table, the curve of which leaves a spreading wedge wedge of space between the chairs at the back even if the seats touch at the front corners. But on the long, straight sides of a rectangular table in a very large dining room there should be 12 inches or a foot of space between the the chairs.



Posted by Eugene Vodovoz at 17 October 2011, 10:21 AM
Categories: Etiquette
Tags: setting idividual places servants guests hostess host
 
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