TIME PERIOD – 20th CENTURY – At Grandma's Table

Long after your grandmother has died, when you think back about her table settings, her choices will reveal her “ways” in a manner you had not imagined. For this reason, everything about a grandmother’s table is of historic, sociological and family interest. A meal is central to our socialization and it tells us volumes.

Large family dinners and large business-related dinners meant that my paternal grandmother had lots of “gear” to go. Because her husband ran a department store with an office in London, she could source beautiful linens, stem ware and china at cost. She favored Minton and L’Imoges and today what she had in her pantry are now styled “Antique Minton” and “Antique l’Imoges.” Some resembled the following. My favorites were the raised patterns with gold:

12-minton-dinners - colbalt blue and gold — Minton colbalt blue

Limoges detail of raised gold 031210hedtler-02_341291c — Detail of raised gold

Her collection of china was very much like the above. It was like looking at candy.

Her tablecloths and table runners were exquisite. But most amazing were champagne silk place mats with lace edges. There were square pieces for the stem ware. This group includes a tea-tray cloth.

Because grandmother gave large card parties with tables set up all over the downstairs, I found that she had a minimum of 20 luncheon napkins in each style to accommodate the tables when set for the meal that preceded the playing. Long ago, a lovely lady who had helped at the house when Grandma was alive, took me through the downstairs and showed me where she had set up the tables and described a typical gathering.

Among my grandmother’s linens I found a crocheted lace piece that was a peculiar shape. Because it was heavy, I assumed it must have been worn by my grandmother’s Belgian mother as a kind of cap. So I tried it on. Oh, how lovely.

I was quickly disabused of my talent for identification of ancient pieces. In looking over pictures of grandmother’s house, I found a picture of a chair wearing it. Can you say “antimacassar”?

©SamHenry

My Great Grandfather had a home on the Halifax River in Ormond Beach, Florida where he lived winters. He was a Scottish merchant and other Scottish merchants had homes near him. They called themselves “the Scottish Syndicate.” The home was called Rowallan after a castle in his native Ayrshire.

Above is my Great Grandmother’s table at Rowallan (ca 1915). The centerpiece appears to be flowers and fruits. These round tables are making a comeback now but with one difference: they are constructed so that you can add leaves around the outside to expand them if you wish. Otherwise, they might be ungainly in today’s interiors.

There was a small orange grove on the property. When the house was sold, the appraiser, in trying to devalue the place for tax purposes said: “it must have cost one dollar per orange to produce fruit in that grove.” In other words, it wasn’t set up for economies of scale!

You could eat fruit al fresco in the grove as my cousins did here:

Or you could eat it at table using a citrus spoon with enameled orange blossoms. This is a spoon actually used at Roallan. It was the gift of a cousin in the family pictured above. She was the youngest and is not pictured.

We know for certain that wild turkey was on the menu at the house. Here is a picture of my young father (ca 1925) with one that had just been shot. We must remember that Florida in those days was not developed to the extent it is today and so wild turkeys were not far away.

We are fortuate to have these pictures and some artifacts from those days almost a century ago. There were seven children in the family and so a spoon is a treasure!