In the 1800s, the weapons of class distinction were made of silver. An exhibit puts the pieces together.
By LENNIE BENNETT
Published August 26, 2003
[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]
Forks from the Gilded Age, spread nontraditionally from the right of the plate, rather than the left: dinner, salad, sardine, fish, dessert, olive, strawberry, cocktail, lemon, pickle and seafood. The plate is from the original dinner service used in the Tampa Bay Hotel, now the Henry B. Plant Museum.
Many years ago at a luncheon given for that season's debutantes, I sat at a very long table presided over by a very grand dame. Between the main course and dessert, a server put silver finger bowls before us. One of the young women picked up her dessert spoon and began lapping up its contents.
Silence descended.
The rest of us sat with our hands in our laps, unsure how to proceed, not wanting to embarrass our friend or offend our host. In less than a moment, she did what any great lady and good human being would do: She picked up her dessert spoon and scooped up several mouthfuls of the tepid rosewater, too. We all did the same.
Then we put our spoons down, removed the bowls to the side and lunch carried on. To my knowledge, none of us ever spoke of the incident.
But it remains the single best lesson in etiquette I've ever had.
Many of the rules change with every generation, but the basic point and purpose of etiquette has always been the same: to provide a framework in which people can interact with civility. It's supposed to be a vehicle for inclusion, but historically it has more pointedly been used in a genteel war of exclusion.
That duality was never more apparent than during America's mid- to late-19th century Gilded Age, a time when "old" money was probably less than 100 years in the making, yet those who had it often tried their best to armor themselves against aspiring parvenues, as any student of Edith Wharton or Henry James knows.
A decisive battlefield was the dinner table and the weapons of choice its vast array of arcane accoutrements.
A telling selection of them is on view at the Henry B. Plant Museum at the University of Tampa in "Sumptuous Silver," an exhibition of the elaborate presentation pieces and table settings favored by the wealthy in the mid 1800s.
As this show demonstrates, it was an era in which dinner could run to 15 courses - a mere eight-course one is set up in one of the museum's parlors - with a dizzying amount of silver utensils spread before guests who needed to know the difference between similar-looking items such as asparagus tongs and a sardine server, who could manipulate an escargot clamp with confidence and, yes, who understood how to use a finger bowl.
The rich could spend money on any number of things, as they can now, but among the essential emblems of gracious living then were the accessories needed to serve and consume copious amounts of food four or five times a day, along with the servants who, like their guests, had better know a baked potato fork from a lettuce fork, and even more, knew how to carve venison and scoop stilton.
And because the Victorians had an aversion to touching their food (no peel-and-eat shrimp buffets for them), the great silver companies that supplied them - Tiffany, International Silver and Gorham in the United States - churned out implements designed for one use only, along with "basic" batteries of forks (dinner, luncheon, salad, fish, dessert), spoons (clear soup, cream soup, fruit, ice cream, demitasse) and knives (meat, fish, cheese, butter) for every kind of menu. And that didn't include the silver tea and coffee services. The punch bowls. The wine and cigar accessories.
Other considerations involved crystal stemware, porcelain services and linens. But nothing would have been more daunting in its specific utility than the silver.
Yet its beauty is undeniable. The silver here totals about 300 pieces from 30 lenders, mostly sterling silver, which is the highest grade. Every piece shows care and pride of workmanship, whether delicately etched with chasing or lavishly ornamented with repousse or pierced into delicate latticework. Some were formed into whimsical shapes, like the butter server topped with a cow, that sometimes, though probably not frequently enough, suggested their purpose.
They take us back to a time when life seemed, for many, more gracious. Taken as evidence of a strict and unforgiving code of behavior, they teach us that striving just took other forms. But like many artifacts from past lives, they have become objects valued for their own sakes, the details of who used them and to what ends finally irrelevant.
And they remind us of the one unfailing dictum of etiquette that has saved so many social aspirants, and would have saved my young friend so long ago: When in doubt, copy your host. As Marie Antoinette's milliner was said to have remarked to her queen, there is nothing new but that which has been forgotten.
If you go
"Sumptuous Silver" is on view at the Henry B. Plant Museum, 401 W Kennedy Blvd. on the University of Tampa campus, through Oct. 31. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday noon to 4 p.m. Admission is a suggested donation of $5 for adults. The museum will host a luncheon on Sept. 16 at the Tampa Yacht Club with guest speaker Patrick Dunne, a senior editor atHouse Beautiful and author of The Epicurean Collector. Tickets are $45. For information, call the museum. 813 254-1891 or www.plantmuseum.com
