When the new display of the 1950s was designed at the Edwardsburg Museum, there was much discussion about table setting.

A typical 1950s dinner table was set, which is very different from today’s table. Many women learned table setting from their home economics class in school or from their mothers who taught them how to do it as part of their daily household chores. But today is there such a thing as a table setting?

Today’s fast paced life doesn’t require any formal setting when things are eaten from styrofoam cartons, cardboard boxes, throwaway plastic or paper plates or just from your hand while standing up or walking around.

Even if you do set a table, where are the salad forks, cruet bottle, dessert spoons, and which side of the plate does the fork go? Does the knife and spoon go together?

Where do you place the napkin? Napkin? The only sure thing is probably the plate!

Some people say “does it really matter?” I think,” yes it does.” Table setting was for the tidy placement of dishes to keep the table from being cluttered.

In order to see formal table settings today it is necessary to eat at a restaurant and usually an expensive one. Many restaurants are so casual that the flatware is wrapped in a napkin and placed anywhere on the table.

In formal settings there are a number of forks, one for each kind of food. Which one to use is an uneasy question. There are forks for shrimp, oysters, pickles, salad, fish, pastry and dessert.

The golden rule is always work from the outside in. Use the outside knife and fork for the first course and then simply work inwards for each course.

Knives are always to be plated on the right and forks should  always be to the left.

Who decided that? It is not very clear, but I think is must have been a lefty. Why else would the fork be on the left if most people are right handed?

The soup spoon, if required, will always be on the extreme right if being served as a first course, or second in from the right if being served as a second course. My question is if this is the second course, what is the first course and why use a spoon?

Now where’s my butter knife? In common usage, a butter knife may refer to any non-serrated table knife designed with a dull edge and rounded point; formal cutlery patterns make a distinction between such a knife and a butter knife. In this usage, a butter knife is a sharp-pointed, dull-edged knife, used only to serve pats of butter from a central butter dish to individual diners’ butter plates. The place setting knife is to be used to spread the butter, not the butter knife.

Dessert cutlery will always be at the top of the place setting with the fork facing right and the spoon positioned above this with the bowl facing left. Why at the top? No room left on either side? Or is it there to tease you letting you know that there will be dessert?

On the 1950s table at the museum you will not see a formal setting because the ‘50s was a time to break many rules.

It was the start of informal times.

 

Jo-Ann Boepple works at the Edwardsburg Area History Museum.