Evening star., 1935-06-02

M EASSk appointments are
asked me each day:
Won't you please
tell me how to have my linen marked2
Won't you please send me tissue paper pat.
terms showing how napkins of different sizes
should be folded1
Where should napkins be placed on the
table?
Won't you please send me correct size of
plate for each course, and use'
l lam also asked to suggest definite makes
and patterns of silver china and glass. which
obviously can not do, further than to advise
each bride to choose whichever style and
pattern she likes best. But the questions that
are evidence of greatest bewilderment are
those on the subject of service plates, which
many of my readers seem to look upon as
emblems of mystery, like the libation cups in
an ancient temple - something set apart from
everyday family life and yet something of
portent to the inexperienced hostess and not
to be trifled with.
So let me try to make it clear that the
precisely the same thing is absolutely nothing
more than the plate with which you choose
or happen 49, to set each place at table.
Moreover the rule of good taste is this: If the
service plate is larger, more ornate, and more
conspicuous than all the other plates that are
to appear in turn upon your table, it is plainly
in bad taste.
Properly therefore, when setting your table,
you choose things that look well together If
you have set of plates that harmonic with
the flowers to be used in your centerpiece.
you would naturally choose these plates for
this particular meal.
The other plates are noticed singly and in
greater detail. Therefore, you naturally set
the places at table with whichever plates best
help the general effect. and then choose plates
for your other courses that are most suitable
for the particular foods to be served. Plates
that are light in color. and especially worth
looking at, are usually selected for salad or
dessert, because salad and dessert are rather
prettier - and therefore more becoming to
fragile porcelain than either fish or meat.
Large dark plates suggest meat: but white
ones are equally suitable, except that they
ought not to be too fragile in type.
Sizes are important, in that the plates ought
not be either so little as to look like saucers,
oIso large as to look like platters. Meat plates
should be larger than the other plates, except
those for broiled lobster, which should be so
especially large as never to be used for any
thing else. Most important, of course, is to
choose plates that are in scale with all your
other table appointments, especially with the
size of your flat silver.
Therefore, if your biggest forks measure no
more than 6H inches in length. and if your
soup spoons are scarcely larger than dessert
spoons, and your dining room is called
breakfast room, and your dinner table top is
three feet square, then the largest plate that
you could very well use would be 9 or at most
912 inches for dinner plate, and 8 to 815
inches for the other courses.
On the other hand, if your dining room and
its furniture are on larger scale and your
spoons and forks and knives are of grown-rlan
size (big forks 824 to 9 inches long; small forks
7 to ~ inches; big knives 9 inches; small
knives IA to inches then a dinner plate
and possibly service plate l0]5 inches
would be proper.
1t is never quite possible to make your
lunch table look perfect when service plates
and bread and butter plates do not match.