SC - roundels and tablecloths

[Laura C. Minnick]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> 
> 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.

Many thanks for posting this, Ras. The work that I have been doing for
some time on tablecloths and tablesetting ( vis-a-vis the manners and
training books sucha as _Ffor To Serve a Lord_) backs up these
assertions quite well- and frankly, I find a written instruction telling
a teenaged boy how to properly lay the cloth to be more reliable than an
artist's rendition of the same cloth. The young man laying the cloth has
a more accurate knowledge of the folds and drape.

'Lainie