It appears my article on Dressing Your Table in the most recent Citizen’s Companion has sparked a few questions about how to dress specific tables. This is great because it means people are thinking about their tables. I am starting a follow up article that will look at dressing tables for various situations. In the meantime, I hope these images are helpful. Don’t just take them as a rule book – look, think and evaluate.

Recreated Examples:

Livingston-Backus House  at the Genesee Country Village and Museum. (c 1850s) (have to point out this person also took a picture of Grandma) Same house done for Yuletide. I really think this needs a cloth.

I think this is Jones Farm done for the Yuletide program at GCVM. It is a working class farming family’s home normally interpreted 1850s.

McKay Kitchen dressed for Yuletide. Another working class family that is a little better off. Usually interpreted 1840s.

Dining room in the Hyde House also known as the Octagon House at the Genesee Country Village and Museum. (c 1870s) Another

Kitchen of the Hyde House (I don’t think this choice would be acceptable for the 1850s)

Dining room in Hamilton House (c 1880s, GCVM) another and another

Family Dining room at Hosmer’s Inn (c1818 interpreted 1830s) Public Dining Room

Examples from Paintings:

White Clothes

Family Life on the Frontier by George Caleb Bingham (c1845) where it drapes a large table.

Another drapes a table in home with more means in The Contest for the Bouquet by Seymour Joseph Guy (c1866).

Most still lifes I have saved also show a white cloth (or now cloth). Each of these show tables set with food. A few examples: several by John F. Francis, Fruit Still Life with Champagne Bottle by Severin Roesen (c1848)

Colored Coverings

 Francis William Edmonds’ Barking Up the Wrong Tree (c. 1850-55) a red cloth covers a small table. This cloth has either a yellow or golden double stripe border. This is a modest working class or  lower middle class home.

Parlor table

Lady in an Elegant Interior by David  de Noter (c. 1852). This round table in what appears to be a parlor is draped in a red patterned cloth which has colors that remind me of paisley shawls (though I doubt this is a shawl.) The cloth is rather tossed or roughly draped.

A small table in Christmas Time by Eastman Johnson (c1864) has another red patterned tablecloth. This one is neatly draping the table.

A dark green cloth with a decorative border drapes a parlor table in Lilly Martin Spencer’s Patty Cake. Another lovely green cloth is draped over a round parlor table in Reverend Atwood and His Family (page 5). This cloth has what appears to be a woven in border type design. This is a similar cloth as well.

One table I am not sure about is in the painting The Song of the Shirt by John Thomas Peele (c1847). The woman is working on her sewing. I don’t know if the yellow fabric with holes draped across the table is a table cloth or simply a piece of cloth.

Kitchen Tables

Kitchen tables, used for work, are shown without clothes. Examples would be The Speculator by Francis William Edmonds (c 1852), The Young Wife: First Stew by Lilly Martin Spencer (c1854), Kitchen Interior by Thomas Hicks (c1865)

This is an example of a painting and a recreation at an exhibit at the Wehle Gallery at GCVM. Notice how the cloth has been removed from the table while she works. I think the cloth in the painting would have just reached over the edges of the kitchen table like those described in advice books. This would have been a utilitarian cloth not a damask.

Cloth Free

Long cloth-less table in the 1821 painting The Dinner Party by Henry Sargent. That cloth free table goes against everything I’ve read about setting a table for dining. There are a few tables from Shaker communities here in Stereovies without clothes.

Illustrations:

1859 Fifth Ave. Hotel NY

1864 Soldier’s Depot Dining

Photos:

This is Tea not a dinner  a colored table cloth.

1870 hotel dining room, 1885 hotel dining room

Orphans home labled 1870, possibly earlier looking at her dress

Other images:

This link shows the same dining room in different centuries. This is England but still interesting to see.

It is to bad these images don’t go back further in time…. White House Family Dining Room and State Dining Room

This is a virtual tour of a later dining room from much further up the socio-economic scale. (I have trouble with the lace cloth for the dining room in the mid-century. I don’t know about later in the century. Directions for making lace cloths seem to me to be meant for parlor or sitting-room use not for eating on.)  

Thoughts….

I do have to say, while putting together images for this I’ve developed the distinct opinion that not enough table cloths are used when a table is set. Cloths protected tables from more than just people’s spills. Advice books often start thier directions for setting a table with heating a room and removing the table cover.

pre 1800

Late 18th century

Table cover late 18th century

Mat, 18th 0r 19th century

1800-1839

Woven, coverlet tablecloth, PA c1800

Cover or cloth, long but not wide enough to fall over sides of a table, c1800

Quilted cotton table cover

Table cover

Table cover, linen plain weave with cotton

1840-1869

Block print floral table cover 1859

Wool, bordered, size for a parlor or sitting room table

Embroidered linen with wool for parlor

Part of a linen damask note the patching

Table cover from 1851 Grand Exhibition Not for dining on.

 1870-1899

Illustration 1889 table or piano cover

c1895 English

C-1900

German c. 1900

English c1900, English c1900, Another

A passage in the 1845 The Ladies’ Work-Table Book’s,  1845 section on plain needlework is nearly identical to a section in Sarah Josepha Hale’s The New Household Receipt-book.

“Table Linen – This department of plain needlework comprises table cloths, dinner napkins, and large and small tray napkins.

“Table Cloths. – These may be purchased either single or cut from the piece. In the latter case, the ends should be hemmed as neatly as possible.

“Dinner Napkins. – These are the various materials; if cut from the piece, they must be hemmed at the ends the same as table cloths. Large and small tray napkins, and knife-box cloths, are made in the same manner. The hemming of all these should be extremely neat. It is a pretty and light employment for all young ladies; and in this way habits of neatness and usefulness may be formed, which will be found very beneficial in after life.

“Pantry linen. – In this department you will have to prepare pantry cloths, dresser cloths, plate basket cloths, china, glass and lamp  cloths, and aprons. Pantry knife-cloths should be of a durable material. The dresser cloths, or covers, look neat and useful. They are generally made of huckaback of moderate fineness; but some ladies prefer making them of a coarser kind of damask. The plate basket cloth is a kind of bag, which is put into the plate basket to prevent the side from becoming greased or discolored. They are made of linen, which is well fitted to the sides, and a piece the size and shape of the bottom of the basket, is neatly seamed in. The sides are made to hang over the basket, and are drawn round the rim by a tape, run into a slit for that purpose. China cloths, and also glass cloths, are to be made of fine soft linen, or diaper; and the cloths used in cleaning lamps, &c., must be of flannel, linen, or silk. All these articles are to be made on the same manner, that is, hemmed neatly at the ends; or if there be no selvages, or but indifferent ones, all round. Nothing looks more slovenly than ragged or unhemmed cloths, which are for domestic use. Little girls of the humbler classes might be employed by the more affluent, in making up those articles and a suitable remuneration given them. ….

There was an interesting passage of the August 17th entry of the 1864 Book of Days:

“‘Table-cloths’ have been in use in Englad certianly since the Saxon period, and in that and every succeeding era.  The word ‘napkin’ was fomerly applied to handkerchiefs and table-linens, as well as to cloths for head-dresses, &c. ‘Napery’ was the general term for linen, especially that for the table. ‘Towel’ requires no explaination.”

Additional Reading:

The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern by Alexander Johnston Warden