Why Europe forgot the ancient art of table setting

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

We must eat every day to build up our strength. At the same time, sitting down at the table, we rarely think about what is on it in front of us. Tablecloth, napkins, cups, spoons - all this seems completely natural to us. Meanwhile, table setting also has an interesting history.

Primitive people, of course, did not have any utensils. Then clay pots and spoons appeared. Then mankind came up with many serving items that facilitate and ennoble the process of eating. However, there is a strange chronological somersault in the appearance of these items!

The heirs of the Romans

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans powerfully civilized peoples: bowls and bowls for drinks made of clay and glass appeared. Moreover, glass was found in many houses. The Romans already had cups, dishes and plates of gold and gilded silver. True, they did not know cutlery, except for spoons, and spoons were rare: they ate soup, dipping a piece of bread into it, and took the rest of the food with their hands.

The Greeks and Romans brought their culture to many places, from Persia to England, from the Northern Black Sea coast to Morocco. Dozens of peoples of Eurasia could watch how the Greeks, drinking wine from bowls, enjoyed the play of girls-flutists. The leaders of hundreds of tribes could learn from the experience of the aristocratic Romans, who kept special servants to serve roasts on the table.

But when the Roman Empire fell, the art of table setting disappeared with it. Europe returned to primitiveness: food was placed in recesses on tables and taken apart by hand. Or used bread crusts as plates. In the 8th century, even at the royal courts of Europe, there were no tablecloths, no plates, no Hellenistic oil lamps! In the evenings, they did with torches and torches.

And suddenly - for no apparent reason - they remembered the feasts of the Greeks and Romans! Again, golden dishes shone on the tables of the nobility (and also without spoons). Charlemagne again brought in "refectory" servants: the steward was responsible for the food, the crab was responsible for the drink. Drinking music sounded again. Tablecloths (on which they wiped their hands) and luxuriously decorated salt shakers appeared.

Further, the food culture "moved to the people." Let not the masses of peasants, but the burghers in the XIV-XV centuries already used wooden and tin plates, knives, spoons, glasses. By the 18th century, special dishes for roasts, tureens and plates made of tin and silver, or even porcelain, appeared on the tables. Decorating the table with luxurious flower arrangements and beautifully folded napkins has become fashionable.

Forbidden subject

Forks in agriculture (and sometimes in battle) have been used since the time of the pharaohs, including in Russia. But the fork hit the dining table even later than the "small pitchfork" was used in the kitchen for cooking. Why? Yes, because the Catholic clergy resisted this innovation - from the considerations that if Jesus did without a fork at the Last Supper, then we do not need one either.

In the second half of the 16th century, not giving a damn about the opinion of the church, noble people took the forks in their hands: the fact is that, according to the fashion of the time, the costume of the nobility had lush high collars. It was difficult to eat without a fork, throwing pieces in your mouth with fat hands, dressed in such costumes.

Perhaps the fork has been invented several times. At first she was two-toothed. In France, a five-pronged fork was used for some time. In the 17th century, it acquired its modern appearance - with three or four slightly bent teeth.

The first forks were brought to England from Italy in 1608. And they "came" to Russia from Poland with Marina Mniszek three years earlier, but did not take root. The opinion of the Orthodox was as follows: since the tsar and the tsarina eat not with their hands, but with a horned thing, it means that they are a product of the devil. Only later, when forks became an everyday item in Europe, Peter I forced the nobility to use them.

From a glass to a faceted glass

The history of drinking vessels shows how the cultures of different peoples mutually enriched each other. In Europe they drank from earthenware, wooden, glass and metal vessels. Porcelain was invented in China. But the form for drinking - the bowl - the Chinese borrowed from the nomadic peoples, and they made them without handles, because you still cannot save the handles on the way.

For a long time, porcelain was transported to Europe from China. In the early 1700s, Johann Böttger received the first European porcelain. In 1710, the first porcelain manufactory in Europe was founded in Meissen, Saxony. The decor of her bowls was reminiscent of Chinese - with mallows, lotus flowers and exotic birds, and, of course, the vessels did not have handles. The handles were attached to them by the sculptor Johann Joachim Kendler in 1731.

From Europe, these products came to Russia. But we already had a rich history of drinking vessels. First, they used a metal enchant - low, round, without a pallet, with a flat shelf handle. In the 17th-18th centuries, glasses came into fashion - with a low base or a stable spherical leg, decorated with enamel, niello or embossing. They called the glass weaving, because it included 1/100 of a bucket (0, 123 liters). They also drank from a hemispherical bowl with a wide top and narrow bottom. They made faceted glasses and mugs from boards.

The history of the faceted glass beaker is interesting. In Europe, such were already in the XVI-XVII centuries. This is for sure, because the painting of the Spaniard Diego Velazquez "Breakfast" (1617-1618) depicts a faceted glass, albeit with oblique edges. In the 17th century, glasses began to be made in Russia.

According to legend, Efim Smolin is a glassblower, who presented a faceted glass to Peter I. The creator of the Russian fleet, having estimated that such glasses do not roll off the table during rolling, ordered them for the fleet. His great-grandson, Paul I, at the end of the 18th century, introduced a limit on the daily allowance of wine for soldiers, equal to a faceted glass.

In the middle of the 19th century, glasses were produced by pressing in the USA, and at the same time the Russian merchant Sergei Maltsov bought American equipment for casting the same glassware in Russia. The demand for his durable cheap handicrafts was enormous; the people called the glasses Maltsov's.

In 1943, at a glass factory in Gus-Khrustalny, a new faceted glass was seen - a shape familiar to us. Such glasses were supplied in large quantities to vending machines with soda water. In Moscow alone, about 10 thousand of them were installed, and each had a device for rinsing a glass: it had to be strongly pressed against a metal lattice so that a stream of water would wash it off. Of course, for such a procedure, the product needed to be strong.

A glass of thick glass, made at a temperature of about 1500 °, was fired twice and cut using special technology, and even, they say, lead was added to it to make it stronger. In fact, on the glass - even if you put it upside down, even if you put it on its side - you could stand with your feet, and it stood.

Newspapers stubbornly insist that the sculptor V. I. Mukhina, the author of the composition "Worker and Collective Farm Woman", but this is not so - the author of the glass is unknown. True, Mukhina also noted herself in the “dishware” field: she created the design of a classic Soviet beer mug.