SC - OT- How do you cook a pig?

[Lady Ysabeau of Prague]

In a message dated 6/17/00 3:32:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
morgana.abbey at juno.com writes:

<< A lot of hotels and banquet facilities use table skirts, which look very
 much like that.  >>

This is from a secondary source titled "The Rituals of Dinner (The Origins, 
Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners) by Margaret Visser. 
Copyright 1991. Harper Perennial ed. 1992 (Harper/Collins). ISBN 
0-00-637909-5. $14.95.

...by the High Middle Ages they were even more expressive of the community of 
the diners than was the table itself. "To share the cloth" of a nobleman was 
to be seen as his equal. When a master dined with his servants at the same 
table, either he was the only person with a cloth before him, or the whole 
table was covered with a cloth but at his place another small napkin was 
laid. One of the most horrible insults a medieval nobleman could endure 
was.......


And......

Damascus in Syria was where all the best tablecloths came from. Damask was 
patterned with lozenges and other figures....

And....At late medieval banquets, splendid cloths were laid over the simple 
wooden boards used for tables........ There were several of them, typically 
and under carpet first, then a large cloth covering the whole table, then two 
upper ones each covering the tabletop and falling to the ground of one long 
side. An "sanap" (French sauve-nappe or "tablecloth-saver") was a narrow 
strip of cloth lying along the table edge nearest the diners, it took most of 
the dirt from grubby or greasy wrists, and was presumably easier than damask 
to wash. The sanap could be made of several layers of cloth, and might be 
used only until the washing ceremony was over......


Hope this helps. Apparently the folds pictured are merely folds and not the 
modern 'skirt' which apparently was, for the sake of economy in modern times 
derived from them.

Ras