Numerous books and articles advised women how to decorate a dining room, set the table, create menus for entertaining, and serve guests. This diagram appeared a textbook by Lucy Allen, an instructor at the Fannie Farmer’s Boston School of Cookery. The book was dedicated to Fannie Farmer and Farmer wrote the introduction.
By the time of its publication in 1922, homes were getting smaller, fewer homes employed maids, and dining etiquette was becoming less formal. This 128-page booklet reflects both old and new trends.
Diagram of Table Laid for Home Dinner Without Service of a Maid in Table Service. In Table Service by Lucy Grace Allen (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1922), 61. (Courtesy of Internet Archive)
Image featured in Investigating Family, Food, and Housing Themes in Social Studies by Cynthia Resor
A fun activity to go with this photograph would be to have students practice setting a table just like this!
This could be a fun picture to show students in a family consumer science class. I remember when I was in a FACS class we did an entire unit over proper table setting and napkin folding. This image would be interesting to compare with how a table was set in other time periods.
I love this picture. I want to use this in a history or economics lesson that has to do with changes in social status and social classes. Students now would look at something like this and think it’s from a movie or a restaurant design, they’d never think to live this way and it’d be cool to teach them how some people in fact did follow these rules of etiquette.
I would love to set my classroom up to be a home in the early 20th century, with students role playing to demonstrate how life was very different over 100 years ago. We could set a dinner table in the classroom. This could be like a wax museum for other classes in the school to visit!