A dedication to the dining table, that most treasured of pieces in your home and the anchor for modern family life.
What is it about the dining table that puts it at the very heart of our homes? Is it its sheer size that makes it dominate? Or its position in a key reception room rather than out of sight and out of mind? Is it the activities that happen upon it, or does history have a hand to play in how it's earned its position as one of the home's hardest working heroes?
The dining table dates to way back when. The ancient Egyptians resurrected makeshift pedestal tables using rock and stone to banquet upon. And, over in early Europe, the Romans feasted on handmade tables in luxurious marble, bronze or hewn timber.
These ancient empires fed the dining table's growth. A love of lavish entertaining cemented its use as the place where food is served and shared. Though it wasn't all a case of formal dinners and sumptuous spreads. The rise of the round table is said to have started with the Romans too - for less grandiose occasions where nobody was designated as head of the table and everyone had equal status, easily able to make eye contact with one another.
Closer to home still, Britain played a role in the table's evolution. During the feudal period, tables were at the heart of court life, with a grand rectangular table positioned in a castles great hall for master and guests to gather and feast. Medieval monasteries honoured the ever-stretching refectory table and accompanying benches - a custom still adhered to in today's historic institutes, from the dining halls of Oxford and Cambridge colleges to London's Inns of Court.
The typical refectory table would have been grand in scale and rectangular in shape (with a removable top - to be followed by the invention of the draw-top table in the 16th century where drop leaves and runners first started to appear).
It was timber in material (oak and elm were most common, though walnut and cherry were not unusual), and trestle-based in design, though the round table wasn't forgotten. In fact, Winchester Castle in Hampshire remains home to one of the few surviving examples of an original round table from the Middle Ages. Away from the pomp and ceremony, it formed the base for regular home life.
Families were typically much bigger back then and so the table needed to be able to comfortably fit everybody around it. Lower-class families had kitchen tables (often placed in the living room as the table for everybody to use as they saw fit), whereas those in the middle and upper classes were upgraded to the more stately dining table. Either way, the table's reputation was confirmed as the home's gathering point, be it for food or family affairs.
Of course, as the centuries ticked by, variations in design ensued. Italian-made tables of the late-17th and early-18th centuries observed marquetry and rare materials as a taste for the ornate took hold. Indeed, Charles II was presented with a silver-clad table by the City of London to mark his restoration as King of England. And more recently, we welcomed French bistro table renditions, born on the 19th-century café scene where pavement space was at a premium.
The dining table today
Modern-day masterpieces haven't changed much from those of old. Most bear a heavy resemblance to the long-stretching refectory table, the charming bistro sets made for two à la France, and the iconic round table where knights once gathered.
The most notable evolution? The table's forever extending function. Sure, food still fills its tabletop, but today's dining table's notion of sustenance is more a case of nurturing togetherness and a sense of community. Homework is done upon it, arts and crafts too, and family debates and important discussions are held at it. The dining table is the new desk - no stranger to laptops, cables and paperwork in place of plates, cutlery and napkins. It's where we work from home. It's the new boardroom table from which you 'dial in'. Indeed, food writer and chef Prue Leith paid £1,100 at auction for food author Elizabeth David's old bleached pine kitchen table for it was "where she cooked her omelettes and wrote most of her books."
Yes, the dining table is a workhorse and a powerhouse, a piece of furniture that serves to please as much as it does seat to feed.
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