Dining

In great courts, dinner was a matter of ritual emphasising the status of the diner. Side tables would accommodate retainers while the lord and his honoured guests would be seated at a high table on a dais. Kings and Queens would sit and dine while courtiers stood and watched.

banquet

Les Tres Riches Heures
de Duc de Berry. Limbourg brothers

Here the Duc de Berry sits under a splendid canopy in isolated splendour, being served by a host of servants and courtiers. Rich and extravagent plate is displayed to one side to demonstrate his wealth, but under the fine cloth the table is simply a board on trestles.

Tables were often long and narrow, with diners seated against the wall and being served from the other side. Elaborate vessels for salt would occupy pride of place in the centre of each table, and served to confirm status. Those seated below the salt were of lower status than those seated above it.

A grand dinner would have many courses but each would consist of a mixture of soups, roasts, pies and desserts.

In this peasant wedding the bridal couple have pride of place marked by a wall hanging, a humbler version of the Duc de Berry's canopy.

The company is much rougher (and far more convivial) and the food a lot less elegant, with earthenware pitchers in place of fine gold plate, but the furniture is much the same, with a long table board on trestles and the guests seated on stools and settles.

peasant wedding

Peasant Wedding. Peter Bruegel

Jacobean table

Jacobean woodcut

Although chairs became more common, stools and benches were still the usual form of seating. A chair might be reserved for the master of the house, to show his position. In this puritan household, both parents are content with stools and the children, in a not very child-friendly age, are expected to stand.

As affluence and expectations increased, backs were often added to stools for greater comfort, until sets of elegant cane or padded chairs became more common.

Long trestle tables gave way to heavy framed and elaborately carved tables and then to lighter smaller tables. By the late 17th Century it became customary for guests to be seated at several small gateleg tables.